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Old 19th Dec 2016, 20:22
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WHBM
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
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We had an extensive discussion about Sterling's transatlantic Caravelle operations over on Flyertalk.

Favoured destinations in the late 1960s-1970s included Santo Domingo, Orlando, and San Francisco/Los Angeles. The latter were a real haul and typically routed from Copenhagen via Keflavik, Bangor and Omaha. It was the more advanced P&W-engine Caravelles used, of course. Notably, Omaha was as far west as United Caravelles were scheduled, and thus had licensed ground engineers, while SFO, although well removed from those eastern Caravelle schedules, was their main maintenance base, they would ferry to and fro.

Other Sterling ultra-long haul Caravelle holiday charters were to Toronto, Bangkok and Natal in Brazil. One of the Bangkok flights crashed into high ground approaching a Dubai refuelling stop one night.

The P&W engine aircraft also had a feature that most of the RR aircraft did not, namely a drop-down supplementary oxygen system. The Caravelle originally did not, but when the fleet of 20 was sold to United the FAA flat refused to give a jet a certificate without it. Hitherto they had relied on keeping under 30,000, a few portable sets with flight attendants, and a crew making an instant emergency descent if there was a decompression at altitude. I presume the Air France F- registered Caravelles that operated from the Caribbean into Miami at the time, or likewise the South American operators, were somehow accepted. I wonder what the UK CAA would have made of it if offered for a UK certificate. It never was.
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