Originally Posted by
jindabyne
most warriors were flown out on charter. I went out on a British United Brittania in '64 (I think!), certainly from Stansted. Back and forth on various others, inluding the RAF Comet IV and Hastings (UGH!). But with the advent of the BOAC VC10, life became far better. On a further tour at Muharraq (short straw), the Moonrocket RAF VC10 was simply bliss - as was the arrival/departure procedure in those days at Brize.
I said this earlier but several places to which we would have flown the troops was to military bases and we tended not to have civvies flying in to them. That is still true to a point but there is no reason why the pax aircraft can't do the bulk of the route with Tac(T) doing the final leg.
There was also the special mods that the airbox deemed essential which was why our VC10s were different from everyone else's VC10 from feight doors to floor to fuel in the fin. We did the same trick with the perfectly reasonable Argosy. Once we got into the special mods game then of course any economies of scale disappeared. Of course we have learnt that lesson with Voyager haven't we?