Thanks for the info about the Turkish A300 night cargo flights and the Royal Jordanian operations.

Nice to see an MD87 (VP-CTF) fly out Monday morning - DC9 variants are getting distinctly rare this side of the Atlantic. Makes a welcome change from all the boring buses and 737's. Made a healthy noise too - must have rattled the coffee cups in Harpenden!

kala87
 

'' must have rattled the coffee cups in Harpenden! '' Don't wake up sleepy Ladacan there has been nothing new on their site since March.

Horrible horrible aircraft! Have had the pleasure of using American's shed of an MD80 series aircraft, of about a 25-30 year old vintage, out of DFW. There's a reason why its rare this side of the Atlantic!

That executive MD87 is quite common, It is more fun when the Executive B732 turns up or the Romanian Mad Dogs operating on behalf of Blue. Smokey noisy goodness :ok:

Happy Belated 75th Birthday Luton!

:ok:

Its even more fun when the executive B732 departs to the Middle East using all the runway.

Reminds me of the Caledonian Tristars that used to go to Cyprus. I spoke to one of the Captains later, after he had gone over to A320s, he said their standard ops was to point it down the runway and close their eyes!

Ah yeah I was really small then but remember some operating in the old Hawaian scheme also.. Air ops? Beasts. Speaking of Beasts.. 777 just departed.

Belated thanks runway 08.

JUNE PASSENGER FIGURES
 

There was a drop of 0.9 per cent in the number of passengers using the airport in June. I would have thought that this was due to the ending of the Waterdford service and more importantly Monarch not having a fifth aircraft based plus an A320 does a W pattern on the Gibraltar service three times weekly. Comments please.

I once paxed on one of those Cally L1011 LTN-LCA flights, on a warm Summers evening in the early '90's. Over 400 POB as I remember. Brakes a bit wiffy during turnaround and we did use all of the runway :eek: on departure. I can only imagine what it must have looked like from the Flight Deck.

Being a London airport, maybe more people took earlier holidays last year prior to the start of the Olympics. Just a thought.

This way before my time...

But didn't an airline called Courtline operate the Tristars out of Luton or even have them based here in the 1950s or 60's?! I thought they operated them to America, so that must have been even more hair raising for the crew!

I am sure I have seen photo's of them in all sorts of weird and wonderful colours. Maybe I am mistaken and they operated their smaller aircraft from LTN?!

(Im a late 1970s baby!)

Giles.

I think you will find the Tristars first entered service around 1970 ish and not the 50-60's and Court Line were the first operator in europe.
Court Line operated them mainly from Luton to within europe and in the second year went down weekly to the carribbean from Luton with a refueling stop in the Azores. To my knowledge they did not operate to the USA from any UK airport, but if my memory serves right, when they went into recievership one was on its way back from somewhere in Canada ??

The Tristars were delivered in 1972 and were mainly used round Europe. As already said they did operate to St Lucia, generally via Bangor.

They were also configured like Caledonian's and carried 400 passengers. Unfortunately I can't remember seeing one take off going to Bangor, as I was still at school. The only time I flew on one was to go to the Paris Air Show, so we didn't have a lot of fuel.

When Court Line went bust one of the Tristars was on the ground at Bangor, but they got it out before the authorities realised.

Level Bust

According my better half who was a trolley dolly on the Tristars, the St Lucia runs went via the Azores, althou these days she does suffer a fair amount of " brain fade " due to her age !!

Probably did both. Thinking about it, I think they used Gander not Bangor. Certainly the last when came out of Gander.

When Monarch did St Lucia with their B720s they went either way depending on the winds. Occasionaly they would come back via the Azores but not land there because of favourable winds, then come inbound via BNN screaming for a straight in on Runway 08 because they were short of fuel! But thats another story!

Court Line TriStars from St Lucia.
Monarch 720s from Woomera (Adelaide, Australia with rocket components)
Britannia 707s from Georgetown, Guyana and Singapore.

....aaah, those were the days

We had the Court Line Pink & Yellow Tristars, don't one end up in the North West corner for a long time........before being put back into service and sent to Far East - Cathy?

G-BAAA Pink
G-BAAB Yellow.

The Court Line One-elevens were three shades of Pink, Yellow, Green or Purple and all the aircraft in the fleet were named Halcyon ... (Days, Dream, Dawn, etc.

I spent many an early morning turning-round One-Elevens - our record in 1972 for a full clean, de-cater, re-cater, refuel, pax off and on was 29 mins!

Cool stories, My early youth was Manx ATP's parked down by the old gate. Southern Air Transport Hercs and Smokey Midland DC9's. Doesnt sound much but super exotic when you compare it to the bland ramp now.