LUTON History and Nostalgia

[cj241101]

foreign operators 1980

I remember 1980 as the year of the DC-8. Apart from the usual Scanair invasion plus the Finnair DC-8's flying for Kar Air, 3 DC-8 operators new to the airport started flying in. Aeral flew an extensive programme using their own (leased from Overseas National) aircraft N9110V, with a few flights on Kar Air's OH-KDM. Bursa operated once a week as did CP Air.

In spite of this, the overall airline count was well down on 1979. Condor and Hapag-Lloyd , both regular for a number of years, (including their Bavaria and Germanair incarnations) disappeared never to return. No Air Malta, Trans Europa, Maersk Air, Royal Air Maroc, Itavia or Middle East programmes. J.A.T combined the Pula and Dubrovnik flights into 1 rotation each week. Tarom only managed a short series in April. Here's what we did have:-

Sterling Airways Caravelle 10B/12 all year, Caravelle 6R’s had all been sold or scrapped by July 1980; 727’s summer only. Basic programme only around 5 flights each week with the usual extras Jun-Aug.



OY-SBE 10/8/80

Austrian DC-9-32/51 late Sun evening all year
Tarom1-11 500 Bucharest Sat Apr only
Bursa Hava Yollari DC-8-21/50 Istanbul Mon 21/4-3/11

TC-JBV 12/5/80. Still in the basic livery of its previous operator Hamerein Air. Their later aircraft TC-JBY and TC-JBZ were in a more attractive green and blue scheme, of which I failed to get a picture.

J.A.T. B707-320C Fri 2/5-26/9
Aeral (Italy) DC-8-55 from 3/5 - early Sep variable programme, up to 3 flights some days peak summer
Inex Adria DC-9-30 Mon Pula 5/5-6/10 Pula Fri May-Sep
Scanair DC-8-62, DC-8-63 (S.A.S.) A300B (S.A.S.) June-Aug

SE-DFK 20/7/80

Transair Sweden 727-100 10/6, 1/7, 8/7 (Linjeflyg F-28), 5/8 x2 (1 by S.A.S. DC-9-41), 12/8
CP Air DC-8-40 Wed Toronto via Prestwick Jun-15 Oct



C-FCPM 3/9/80 (think it was still carrying CF-CPM actually, 5 years after Canada officially changed their registration prefix to C-)

Kar Air DC-8-50 DC-8-62 (Finnair) Caravelle 10B (Finnair) Jun-Sep DC-10-30 (Finnair, 3/7 only)

OH-LHA 3/7/80

Linjeflyg Fokker F-28 probably only 3 flights Thu 21/8-4/9
Minerve Caravelle 6R several ad-hoc flights Jul/Aug

Aer Turas Britannia CL-44

EI-BGO, EI-BBH 3/4/80 (their entire fleet at the time).

Geminair Britannia



Laker operated DC-10-10’s during the ski season Jan-mid Apr; Milan-Malpensa Thu 1235/1450, Turin Fri 1220/1450
Orion based a 737-200 at the airport from May
Redcoat introduced CL-44 G-BRED in August, replacing Britannia G-AOVS

G-BRED 1/7/81


G-AOVS Luton 12/10/80. Used by the BBC for their series "Buccaneer" about a fictitious cargo airline Redair, screened summer 1980. Aircraft was then used for fire training; The fuselage still exists somewhere near the fire training ground (still there 21/5/15)

Air Ecosse started late night mail flights with Bandeirantes, 3 flights each weekday night
Skyways Cargo continued with their 6 nights a week newspaper flights to Amsterdam with FH-227's, unfortunately going into receivership on 16th October.
Air Bridge were still operating their 6 nights a week newspaper flight to Glasgow with a Vanguard Merchantman.