1970's
BMA British midland did try to operate their first affinity 707 charters from CDD castle donnington (EMA) in 1970/71
but the one HM customs guy had to come from Hull and he was often late and the airport bank only opened twice a week as did the cafe
so when 186 passengers turned up inbound or outbound it was chaos and the tour charter company threatened BMA to pull the plug so that's why the 707's ended up based at STN and not EMA
HARD TO BELIEVE?
“A first-class row blew up in May when a major U.S. tour operator, American Charter Company, reluctantly forced the Company BMA to transfer its U.K. trans-Atlantic terminal from Castle Donington to Stansted, due to lack of immigration officials at the airport, and the lack of currency exchange facilities. In a statement to the press Mike Bishop (MD of BMA) said that East Midlands Airport had thrown away its chance to become an important terminal for international air traffic. The Company was extremely disappointed and very concerned about events since the Boeing flights from Seattle to Castle Donnington had started two months previously. A strong commercial effort had been made to transfer the trans-Atlantic operations to the main base airport for obvious reasons, and there had been nothing but problems. A lot of foreign visitors had gone to the airport and received a distinctly bad impression. Both British Midland Airways and the Airport Authority had stood to profit if the service had remained at Castle Donington, both financially and in the long-term. The sums of money involved were not small, as the airport would have made a minimum of £50,000 in landing fees alone, apart from the prestige involved. The Company stated that there would not be any expansion of British Midland Airways operations at East Midlands until services improved.”
CUSTOMS & EXCISE
“ The main problem, not entirely the airport’s fault, was because one immigration officer, who had to travel all the way from Hull, was supposed to deal with 186 passengers of every nationality. In addition the airport bank and cafe opened only twice a week and, of course, this was completely inadequate.” You can’t of course blame the unfortunate Customs Officer or the part-time bank teller/manager – the problem of arrogance was at a much higher level and reflects, if nothing else, an appalling disregard, lack of manners and thoughtfulness for the basic human needs of weary travellers.
Without any doubt whatsoever, this reflects an abysmal lack of 'joined up thinking' at very senior management levels regarding pre-planning when launching such a major project.
this was 1970!