I'm very sure there was no outfit flying to Italy with a DC-8 in Summer 1986 (so as mentioned the program must have been dropped)
TUI UK are now fully concentrating their efforts on selling full IT packages, and using seat only sales as a 'fringe benefit' rather than being the focus of their strategy) and that policy seems to be paying dividends for them.
Absolutely....(which is what I mentioned) When TUI either own hotels or have UK exclusives, it allows TUI much more control over the price of a package (and therefore profit margin)
The Thomsonfly operation set-up as a "knee jerk" to the LCC's at CVT, DSA and BOH was a mistake and lost money. It did however reinforce to TUI that they had to concentrate on their core markets and leave the LCC's to do their own thing!