Originally Posted by
wayoutwest
g/day all.did boac and british airways use the vc10 on their round the world service? i think it went out via the usa down to NZ and home via australia and the middle east.i seem to remember BA had another service using vc10s from joburg -seychelles to india or singapore.
Over the years BOAC went forwards and backwards between the 707 and the VC10 on these services, depending on how they were deploying their fleet. Because the crews were qualified on only one type, of course, and due to the large number of crew slips that took place, changing from one type to another was a substantial logistical exercise and so was only done rarely.
There were two transpacific routes, the northern one through Honolulu, Tokyo, Hong Kong etc, and the southern one through Honolulu, Fiji, Australasian points, etc. The northern route went back to Bristol Britanna days (when they stopped at Wake Island between Honolulu and Tokyo) and was based around British route authority to serve to the USA from Hong Kong; the later route from Hong Kong to South Africa was similar. Cathay Pacific in those days was a limited regional carrier. The southern route also had a predecessor in Bitish Commonwealth Pacific Airways, a joint UK-Australia-New Zealand operator of transpacific services in the 1940s-50s, which BOAC had a 20% shareholding in.