A good proportion of my initial line training with BAF in March 1976 was on G-BCWE, which was on wet lease to Air Anglia, flying Leeds-Amsterdam. It wasn't a total wet lease, because we had an Air Anglia stewardess teamed up with us for the week, the sole cabin crew member. (BAF always operated with two stewardesses on the fifty seat Herald.)
The superior performance of the F27 was amply demonstrated one evening when the Air Anglia Fokker took off behind us out of Schiphol, and proceeded to outclimb and overtake us, on its way to Newcastle - or was it Edinburgh? But hey-ho, I'd finally broken the magic 5,700kg barrier, and I had an aircraft with gas turbines, AC electrics, and pressurisation - of a sort - ARB (General) for the passing of!
BAF eventually acquired the British Midland Herald G-ASVO, and I got to know this aircraft very well on the Gulf-Air wet lease in Bahrain in the spring of 1977, until it was replaced by G-BAVX for the last few weeks of the contract.
Last edited by Georgeablelovehowindia; 1st Dec 2012 at 22:30.