As well as commenting on WHBN s question about loads to Eastern Europe I wanted to say what a great thread this has been. I started flying as pax in 71 and made full use of fathers BEA/BA concessions which treated me as a child until age 26 (on reaching age 26 I married a Speedbird London radio op so the concessions continued)
Flew a lot on all BA Trident marks as pax thought they were great although on a trip to Rome with a friend who was a BOAC SO or junior FO on 707s he said he was never that good passenger especially flying backwards.
Tridents took me safely all around Europe and on my honeymoon and back so great affection for them. In fact the return from there was a very rare landing on 05R wooden approach light poles and all into a freezing and snowy Heathrow after a fascinating approach from ‘overhead the field’ which gave me my best ever view of my home airport.
Anyway back to Eastern Europe, I don’t think low load factors were confined to Eastern Europe –because I travelled sub load a lot I got quite adept at finding which flights were less busy. Some seemed to be virtually positioning flights to operate a peak hour sector back to LHR –mid mornings or afternoons to Amsterdam come to mind. As to Eastern Europe (proper Eastern Europe in those days too with soldiers and guard dogs on the ramp) I made a couple of trips there in 70s Budapest was one I think and that was a sort of Tue Thu Friday affair and as I recall was fairly busy but a trip back from Prague seemed to have about three people in addition to a BA football team I was a ringer for and of course we were all subload. Lot of fussing around by the crew on weight and balance issues on that trip –everyone forward of the wing I think.
A noisy beast on the outside but a good looking plane and I believe very fast-I recall one trip back from Rome as we smoothly passed a BOAC VC10 a few thousand feet below; the Captain ( this would have been pre BA) pointing out that we were easily overtaking the other iconic Brit jet. I also went to Stockholm several times on Tridents and they were markedly quicker than the Scandi DC9s over that sector but I don’t suppose saving 10-15 mins on even the longer short haul sectors made much sense economically.
Enjoyed all the postings here and it is so nice that PPrune allows those of us not Crew or ex Crew or Airline staff to enjoy such fascinating discussions.