I was lucky enough to fly LHR-HKG in a BOAC 707 in July 1964. The first three stops were Frankfurt, Rome and Beirut. It was noticeable that the aircraft departed LHR half full and people got on board at FRA to go to New Delhi, Bangkok and HKG. Similarly, people from LHR left at Rome, Beirut and other interim stops. I think only a dozen of us went the whole route, and even then (as the aircraft went on to Tokyo) you could say we left the service early too.
Quite simply, at a time when the return fare to HKG was £416, and a junior RAF officer's pay in those days was less that £1000 (so heaven knows what the average wage was), it is hardly surprising that demand for long range travel was so low that aircraft had to stop to pick up passengers to make any economic sense of providing a service at all. European airlines other than BOAC could be seen at Kai Tak only once or twice a week so, for example, if you were German and you needed to be in HKG on a Tuesday, you would fly BOAC if Lufthansa's one and only weekly schedule was three days adrift from your requirement.
Every day, the front page of the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong used to publish, in a little panel on the paper's front page, a list of the day's international arrivals at Kai Tak. There were no more than a dozen aircraft on each day. There were more ships arriving in the harbour!
Returning HKG-LHR in late September, our VC-10 had to overfly a scheduled stop (Zurich) because of fog. I recall Captain Eagleton coming back to apologise personally to the one passenger affected. That gives you an idea of the then daily passenger traffic demand from HKG (plus Rangoon, New Delhi, Karachi and Cairo) to Zurich, even with the pull of an airline offering the brand new (and much celebrated) VC-10.
It was different in those days.
Last edited by D120A; 7th Apr 2011 at 22:17.