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Old 27th Dec 2016, 21:04
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WHBM
 
Join Date: Oct 2002
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I'm with SSD in remembering the Caravelle's appearances at Ringway. When I stalked the terraces in the '70's they were frequent enough but stood out from other types both on the ground and airborne. The AF evening arrival was usually a Caravelle along with regular Sunday appearances by Sterling. The holiday charters accounted for the bulk of appearances with Aviaco being the front runner along with JAT. Infrequent visits uncluded Transavia and Transeuropa, the French Air Charter International and an Italian outfit that used to stand in for Alitalia, (SAM I think). I'm not sure if Spantax and Balair used to operate Caravelles into Ringway as well. The only chutes I saw streamed were AF's

I also remember Altair of Italy operating some Caravelle III's into Manchester 1981-1983 ish?


SAM, like a number of European charter operators of the era, were a subsidiary of the national carrier, Alitalia in this case, using a hand-me-down fleet with minimal livery modifications. Employed on holiday flights in peak season, much of their off-season work would often come, as apparently here, from chartering back to their mainstream owner. Air Charter were the same with Air France, and likewise Aviaco with Iberia.

Transeuropa had a substantial holiday flight programme from Spain into Manchester for Harry Goodman's Intasun holiday brand, in the period before he started in-house operator Air Europe. Knowing Goodman they had probably just managed to undercut Dan-Air by a pound or two. There was a further Spanish Caravelle charter operator called TAE, who were notably rare, and generally just did odd subcharters.

Neither Spantax nor Balair had Caravelles, though I can see the latter running their owner Swissair's aircraft under their own flight numbers.

I remember seeing several Caravelles of Italian carrier Altair at Palma in summer 1983. It seemed bizarre that travellers from one Mediterranean country would take package holidays to another.
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