BA did invest in 737s in the early 80s and used some of them for charter, including the very unfortunate Manchester accident aircraft. But I think you will find their charter fleet hovered around ten throughout. Remember this was the time Air Europe launched and quickly got up to nearly thirty 737s and maybe twenty 757s.
I am happy to be reminded of Enterprise holidays who I remember as a good quality operator. They certainly wanted to compete. However they remained a secondary player squeezed by the market leader Thomson and the aggressive number two Intasun (sister company of Air Europe), followed by Airtours who filled the lower end of the market niche after Intasun's demise. Again I was personally involved at the time.
The British Airways board were obviously not keen on competing against themselves in the rapidly expanding seat only market, which was the direction Air Europe developed things. The charter airline was a relatively small part of BA's empire and eventually it was divested.
If you are really interested in the subject I can highly recommend Flying off course, the economics of international airlines by Professor Rigas Doganis, particularly chapter 6 the economics of passenger charters.
Last edited by lederhosen; 22nd Jul 2011 at 06:31.