Different airfield?
Further to evansb and WHBM, my understanding has been that the original airfield at Wadi Halfa, Northern Sudan, as used by CAA (and perhaps Airwork or Hunting Clan) Viscounts was inundated by Lake Nasser after the neighbouring Egyptians built the Aswan Dam downstream on the Nile in the 1960s. (The Sudanese part of the lake is apparently called Lake Nubia.) It appears from Wiki that the town itself was abandoned, and a new settlement built on the east side of the lake.
The Aerad Supplement for Nov 1984 shows a "Wadi Halfa (Nuba [sic] Lake)" aerodrome, elevation 961 ft, at N2145 [sic] E3131, with an unpaved Rwy 06/24 of 6560 ft. Google Earth shows it nearly 20 miles east of the new town at a latitude of about N2148. The runway and taxiway look brown (possibly latterite?), partially contaminated with pale, drifting sand. It seems unlikely to be the same airfield.
After Alan Lupton's Vikings were phased-out around 1956 ***, CAA operated the Zambezi service, as WHBM shows, from Salisbury to London with the Viscount 748D, of which it bought 5. The "D" denoted "slipper" fuel tanks, but whereas from 1957 the rival BOAC Britannia 102 (and later 312) flew the Khartoum/Rome sector direct, the Viscount had to tech-stop at Wadi Halfa and Benina, where the crews may have slipped (?).
Yes, CAA's Coach class was indeed cheaper in 1958 than BOAC's Britannia, UAT's DC6B, and SAA's DC7B. Thereby hangs an off-topic tale involving a family friend: a young English policeman with the BSAP. He needed to return home suddenly, as his father had died. Funds were short, and air fares high in real terms, but he hurriedly booked a flight with UAT (meaning a flight change at Paris LBG), as CAA was presumably full. However, there must have been a cancellation, because the travel agent phoned late in the day, offering a cheaper seat on the Viscount, which was leaving earlier than UAT. When we heard on the Saturday morning that the Viscount had crashed at Benghazi, we had no idea that he was on board.
*** [EDIT]
CAA had suffered the loss of a Viking due to a main-spar failure en-route over Tanganyika in 1953, as a result of which the fleet was grounded. The problem necessitated redesign and replacement of the wing main-spars on the world Viking fleet. CAA was able to do the work in-house, and operations were soon resumed. The debut of the Viscount in CAA in 1956 more or less coincided with the transfer of airline operations in Salisbury from Belvedere, in close proximity to the city, to the present-day airport (originally referred to as Kentucky, although its RRAF base was known as New Sarum). The Vikings were retired soon after, the Viscount representing a sea change in speed and comfort.
Last edited by Chris Scott; 25th Apr 2014 at 23:29.