Originally Posted by
LTNman
Never seen a photo of a Channel Airways aircraft at Luton.
They did of course principally operate their prop aircraft from Southend and their jets from down the road at Stansted. However they were renowned for not getting decent holiday flight series for their fleet (apart from at West Berlin), so should Britannia, Autair or Monarch be an aircraft down they could be the sub-charter to fall back on, anywhere round the country.
The Scottish Flyer hopping service used both Viscounts and 748s; Channel still had one of these (G-ATEI) from their original fleet of four when the service was running, and it was used on the third day of schedule - it didn't take long to realise they were never going to fill a Viscount. The en-route airports were indeed request stops, bookings and loads were advised to ops for each point, with last-minute variances through ATC as described above, and if there was nothing the stop was missed, in fact if every point was called the service ended up well behind time. In the first week journalists turned up at the lesser points like Teesside to see if they could get the flight to drop in just for them.