I was based in LBA 66/67 and LHR 68-70 flying initially the HS748 and latterly the various marks of Viscount. Initially we had 3 748s and 4 V700s. We also leased some Skyways 748s for winter seasons as required. As the V806x were introduced the 748s disappeared and eventually the V700s too. Meanwhile the Ambassadors, which were based in LHR and NCL went also, barring the horse freighters.
When we eventually got down to just 6 V800s the network had shrunk a bit. No longer were there so frequent flights to the Channel Islands and weekend charters to places like OST had stopped. Originally we operated a much larger scheduled network from LHR to places like KFT, BIO, EAS and BIQ. Also there were IT operations such as GOA night flights and bulb field charters to RTM.
The distribution of aircraft – from long distant memory, were 1 in LHR to operate the first LBA flight, one in NCL for the BFS and DUB flights and the rest in LBA. Just what they did I don’t completely remember, Certainly there was an early LHR and a BFS. What is certain though was that the aircraft all rotated through all bases on a frequent basis. A day’s work for us might be LBA-LHR-LBA-LHR-NCL-LHR-LBA. Alternatively we might do the LBA-AMS-DUS-AMS-LBA which I think was also the first flight of the day for one aircraft. The 6th was probably a floater for maintenance which moved from SEN to CWL around ‘68.
Certainly by the time I left the tie-up with BEA was kicking in and we operated rotations through MAN e.g. LHR-MAN-BFS-MAN-LHR.