Adria Airways Rombac 1-11

[Mooncrest]

Anyone remember these ?

They operated a few summer seasons, mainly out of Ljubljana, in the mid-eighties. I flew on one to and from LJU from LBA in 1987, YU-ANS, to be precise. I believe the pilots came from Tarom, who also supplied the aircraft, with cabin crew from Adria. I could be wrong. Said aircraft seemed to have seen better days but wasn't that old if I remember rightly.

Those were the days ;)

[WHBM]

It was aircraft #403. Adria, still a Yugoslavian operator then, who had a very seasonal operation, leased several of them in Summer 1987, when they were certainly cheap on the market. The aircraft was fairly new when you rode it, first delivered to Tarom in summer 1984. By 2000 Romavia, the Tarom charter offshoot, was finished with it and it was dumped at Bucharest, where it was still laying derelict some years later.

The best-known leases of this fleet were to Ryanair in Dublin at the same time, they started off the jet services to Luton, Liverpool and elsewhere, and as described Romanian flight crews operated them. In 1987, which was before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was great competition in Romania to operate a contract based in The West, and several of the test pilots from the ROMBAC factory got jobs at Dublin. I'm sure their flying skills were the best but their English wasn't, and they were shortly prohibited from making PA to the cabin, except in an emergency. Pity poor ATC.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Adria-Airways-(Tarom)/Bucuresti-Rombac-1-11-561RC/0294139/M/

[Mooncrest]

That's the girl. Remarkable to think she was only three years old when I flew on her. Must have been a hard life with Tarom in those days. I remember on both flights the cabin crew did all the PA stuff and we didn't hear a word from the pilots at all. Maybe they were forbidden by Adria from speaking to the pax but they seemed happy enough as they walked across the concrete at Ljubljana after the flight.

[WHBM]

Adria in those days was not the airline of the same name we know now. They were a Yugoslav charter carrier with an HQ in Ljubljana, but their main operational centres in the summer were at Pula and Dubrovnik, on the Adriatic coast.

Strangely, for an Eastern European socialist country, Yugoslavia had several holiday charter airlines. Adria, then badged as Inex-Adria, had been around since the early 1960s, initially with secondhand DC6Bs, then DC9s for many years. Another charter carrier was Aviogenex, who used Tu134s for some 20 years before moving on to Boeings. Air Jugoslavia was further operator, who used leased capacity from the national carrier JAT. All were regulars at UK airports at weekends from the late 1960s to the early 1990s; virtually no UK charter carriers got a look in at flights to Yugoslavia.

After the civil war and breakup of the country, when these airlines all disappeared from view for a while, Adria re-emerged as the national carrier of Slovenia, operating scheduled services out of the capital Ljubljana, while JAT became the same out of Belgrade, now in Serbia. Aviogenex hung on with oddball leasing contracts but eventually disappeared.

These charter carriers would have been poor economic prospects under western accountancy because of their short summer operating season and concentration on low-price markets. They did a bit of leasing in the winter (notably to Arabic carriers) but much of the fleets stood idle. Leasing the One-Elevens from Tarom for the summer was an attractive alternative for Adria, but merely transferred this problem to the Romanians. In any event the Tarom One-Eleven fleet did a very low number of hours while in service.

That One-Eleven, incidentally, has the basic Tarom red livery, with just titles and logos adapted to Adria.

[IB4138]

Anglo Cargo Airlines, the UK Stansted based, freight airline that went bust, fleet included a 757PF and a Romanian registered 1-11, with the reg YR-BCR.

Here's a link to another photo of the Inex-Adria machine, at Leeds/Bradford:

http://www.bac1-11jet.co.uk/images/404%20Adria%20Airways%201-11%20YU-ANT%20Leeds%20Bradford%201987.jpg

[Mooncrest]

Just a thought about the 80s and the Yugoslav charter airlines practically having the market to themselves. For a spell in 1983, Britannia Airways operated a series of flights to Pula from Leeds Bradford (before the runway extension was completed). On every flight they used the same aircraft, a 737-200 dry-leased from Transavia, reg PH-TVP, painted in an all-white scheme. I don't know which tour operator was behind these flights but I would guess Thomson, probably testing the market or daring to queer Yugotours' pitch !

It was to be another two years before Yugoslavia was to be served from LBA again, but this time in the guise of JAT 707s and DC9s.

[xtypeman]

There was also the Tarom 1-11 that flew for BIA as well with the reg YR-BRA.

[jetstream7]

Dan Air also operated a Rombac 1-11 (YR BRD) in their full colour scheme in 1989

As an aside, I believe the Transavia 737 PH TVP was subchartered by Britannia rather than dry leased. Aircraft was crewed by Transavia, both flightdeck and cabin crew, with a solitary Britannia cabin crew member - I flew on this aircraft from BHX to CFU in September 1983.

[on time all the time]

I flew for Ryanair Europe which was the charter division of Ryanair based in Luton .
We had one Rombac. Some of the flight decks were Romanian but never captains.
They were very friendly and easy to work with.
I flew for Ryanair Europe in 1989. It was the rebranded London European. We had 2 1-11s, a Rombac and a BAC1-11 475.
The Rombac was only 2 years old when I joined but looked terribly old inside.
Both were registered in the uk.
We sometimes had one from Ireland coming to help and could fly on it although it was registered in Ireland. The one they used to send was EI-BSS which was terribly unreliable....the bad sheep of the fleet.

[on time all the time]

The Ryanair Europe Rombac was G-BNIH.

[Chidken Sangwich]

I think the -475 (actually a 476) was G-AZUK with G-AYOP the hangar queen that sat in Hangar 62 as a 'christmas tree' for all those years.

[Mooncrest]

I didn't realise the Transavia 737 was a wet lease, not remembering the Dutch accents on the RT at any time. Still seems a bit of an oddball route to have served from an airport (LBA) whose charter flights were, at the time, virtually exclusively to Spain with Britannia, Air Europe, Monarch and Orion.

Speaking of white 737s, 1983 also saw Air Europe operate G-BKRO through Leeds Bradford, usually on Sunday afternoon to Palma. The leased Air Florida machines were regulars at the time as well. Must have been one of those occasions when AE were shorter than usual of normal capacity.

Wish we still had these airlines around and Aviogenex, Inex Adria and so on. The UK regional airports were more interesting then.

[Capetonian]

DanAir briefly operated a service MAD-LGW, I'd guess 1989/1990. I flew that route quite often, it was usually operated by the ROMBAC.

[WHBM]

The Romanian aircraft took for ever to be manufactured, the UK production line had been shut down for years by the time they were finally completed, and they were only turning out a handful per year; I believe all the remaining parts had been shipped over there from BAe and then possibly lay around in warehouses for a long time. They would also be of significantly old design in the first place.

[The SSK]

Newcastle 'came alive' at a certain point in the mid-60s when, from nowhere seemingly, appeared regular DC-6 operations by Adria and a couple of Spanish operators. Up until that moment, registrations other than G- had been an extreme rarity and so had been visitors of that size.

Recall arriving by bike early on Friday evenngs and as I mounted the crest on the approach road the tips of one - two - three DC-6 tails becoming visible on that tiny apron on the Woolsington side. Of course the Ian Allen books didn't even have the charter fleets listed so you had to carefully pencil them in.

God, I'm getting old.

[Mooncrest]

The good thing with the 1-11 generally was the build quality. Typical British belt and braces design and construction (which turned up in similar form on the DC-9), as used on the equally tough HS748 and Viscount. Just a shame about the rather underwhelming Speys. Once the Romanians took over production, the design and powerplant were of a previous generation so I suppose the aircraft were bound to look dated, to western eyes anyway. As WHBM says, YU-ANS was only three years old when I flew on her but she looked like she'd been around much longer.

Aviogenex must have been laughing when they got their hands on the pair of 727s from the Yugoslav government in 1983. Still in production, reasonably new and undoubtedly with relatively low cycles on the airframes. They, and the machine acquired from Alitalia, turned up all over Europe in the following decade, along with the JAT 727s. Did JAT ever use their 737-300s on their Air Yugoslavia charter work ? I don't ever remember seeing them, usually the 727s, DC9s and the 707s for a spell.

[The SSK]

An ex-colleague of mine, formerly Chief Pilot for a flag-carrier that operated a 1-11 fleet, called them the most over-engineered aircraft in history - 'machined out of a solid block of aluminium' was his phrase.

Consequently indestructible, but horribly heavy.

[Mooncrest]

It was around the same time occasional foreign airliners started to appear at Leeds Bradford but only on sporadic IT trips. Pan Adria and Sabena did the honours with their piston props. The likes of Braathens and Euralair appeared towards the mid seventies and eighties, again prior to the runway extension, but using 737s. In the meantime Aer Lingus was a regular with their (then)new 1-11s and later the 737s. Otherwise, LBA's traffic was probably very much as at Newcastle with BKS/Northeast, Dan-Air and the like. It was at least 1985 before the Spanish and Yugoslav IT airlines came along. And where are they all now ??? A shame in some respects. :sad: The Spantax 737 landings were often a sight to behold.

[The SSK]

'Foreigners' at NCL in the 60s, before the DC6s started arriving, were Daks of Rousseau (F-), Schreiner (PH-) and Wideroe, the latter carrying lobsters. Braathens Friendships with ships crews (not much call for that traffic in LBA) and short inbound charter programmes in Summer by Convair 440s of Kar-Air (OH-) and Finnair.

[WHBM]

I don't recall the JAT 737-300s picking up any of the holiday charter work either, they seem to have stayed based at Belgrade on scheduled flights. The first one was delivered in 1985; by this time the Croatian-based holiday industry was already starting to fall out with the Serbian-based JAT from Belgrade, and I get the feeling that JAT pulled right back from Dubrovnik and Pula holiday operations before the overall carrier fell by the wayside for a few years in the 1990s.

Incidentally those 737-300s are still an intact fleet with JAT (they were leased out during the civil war, but all came back afterwards), and nowadays are still daily visitors into Heathrow and similar major points, where they fall among the oldest daily visitors.

[Dairyground]

Newcastle 'came alive' at a certain point in the mid-60s when, from nowhere seemingly, appeared regular DC-6 operations by Adria and a couple of Spanish operators. Up until that moment, registrations other than G- had been an extreme rarity and so had been visitors of that size.


Was that because of the runway extension that happened around that time?

[The SSK]

Newcastle was taking DC6s while the runway was still shorter (5700’), there was a weekly Cunard Eagle service MAN-NCL-Bergen (worth getting out of bed early on a Sunday to see). Plus there had already been a fledgling IT operation to (?) Palma with Connies of Skyways and Euravia (even more worth seeing). I’m struggling to remember whether BKS upgraded the London service from Ambassadors to Brits before or after the runway extension, I’m pretty sure the Brits were OK with the shorter distance. I can’t pinpoint when the foreign DC6s began to arrive. As a spotter, the long airfield closure for the runway work blunted my enthusiasm, by the time it opened again I had other interests. I did go back for a while, but much less frequently.

It was a great place to spot. There was a small waving-off area on the apron, virtually under the wings of the aircraft. If anything interesting came by you could go to the Apron Manager’s office and ask if you could go out for a closer look and if there was nothing scheduled to move he’d probably let you. First stop on arrival was to visit the fire hut where they had a board with the day’s expected movements chalked up. If anything recognisably civilian overflew you could go up to the tower to ask if they had a registration. And the spotters were more than welcome in the terminal, where we got half-price tea and coffee – on the understanding that we would vacate when passengers started arriving in numbers for their departures.

The downside was of course that there was very little traffic. Breaks of an hour or more between movements were not unusual, nor were days when you didn’t ‘cop’ anything at all, or went home with one solitary aircraft to underline in your CAM. I spent a lot of this time reflecting on what made air transport tick – no bad thing, career-wise.

There used to be a terrific website, connected with the local branch of Air-Britain, where someone (called Glenn I think) who had graduated from being a spotter to a job in the Tower, posted a visitors’ log, month-by-month throughout the early and mid 60s. I could recollect the majority of things he recorded. I must have known him – the spotters’ community was very small – but I can’t picture who it was.

[Mooncrest]

I hope there comes a time when Slovenia and Croatia make a large-scale return to the UK holiday market. It seems now that destinations like Ljubljana, Pula, Rijeka, Dubrovnik and Split are largely names from from the past for many UK regional airports. Croatian and Adria fly into Manchester and Dubrovnik and Split are summer routes for Jet2 but the mass Saturday to Monday operations are a memory.

Ljubljana may be a good bet once again before too long. Skiing at Kranjska Gora in the winter, walking and mountaineering in the summer. Happy days. Would be nice to see Aviogenex back again but as they're Serbian based with a single, elderly 737-200 I'm not that hopeful !

[Mooncrest]

Six years later and Leeds Bradford still doesn't have any flights to Ljubljana. The classic Croatian trio of Pula, Split and Dubrovnik are still operated in the summer by Jet2 though. I wonder if Ljubljana's location in the Julian Alps limits its appeal to the point it wouldn't make enough brass ?

Do easyJet and Adria still operate to the UK from Ljubljana ?

[rog747]

interesting post
yugotours was the UK's primary charter tour company for yugoslavia in the 70's until the war

as mentioned inex adria and aviogenex plus a/c chartered from JAT were seen in vast numbers at almost every UK airport each summer
flights were mainly to Pula Split LJU and Dubrovnik
Tivat was just open and I think some of the UK charter airlines flew in there - I do not recall yugotours going there

some other UK tour companies using BUA/BCAL (Horizon and 4S) Laker (Lord Bros, arrowsmith) Enterprise/Flair (BEA airtours) and BY (thomson) flew to DBV LJU and PUY certainly in the 70's onwards
I flew LGW-DBV in summer 72 and went out on a Horizon flight should have been a BCAL 1-11 500 but we got a Northeast trident out and the wardair 727 home 2 weeks later

LJU sadly saw a BY Britannia G-ANBB crash on App there in summer 1966 on a Thomson Skytours flight from LTN and in 1971 an aviogenex TU-134A crashed and overturned on landing in a bad storm at Krk (Rijeka) - a yugotours holiday flight from Gatwick

LJU was a busy destination for UK work from the 1960's as many pax then coached over to Venice or went on coach tours

Dan Air and BIA both chartered the Tarom 1-11 500's for various seasonal IT work often sending them down to the Greek islands
i flew ATH-LGW on G-TARO summer 1985 and it took over 4h 45m with the other later departing DA flights 727's overtaking us

the holiday market in most former yugoslavian countries i think is booming - many loco's have moved in

[Level bust]

In the mid 80s, the Thomson Holidays series to Yugoslavia (from Luton anyway) were operated by Inex-Adria (as it was then) using a mix of DC9-30s, Dc9-50 and MD80s. I flew to Pula in 1986, out on DC9-30 and back on a DC9-50.

Yugotours holidays at the time were operated by Aviogenex, using mainly B737s. Prior to the 737s one got to go on a TU134!

[rog747]

ah interesting - maybe yugotours shifted much work from inex adria due to their accident record? their last big one (accident) was the loss of their brand new MD81 in corsica 1981/82?

not all their fault - mainly bad luck on several -
although yugotours flights suffered 2 accidents
one with inex adria (mid-air with BEA Trident 3 going from SPU to Germany) and the aviogenex Krk crash from LGW I mentioned above.

[Mooncrest]

When I flew to Ljubljana in 1987 I was unaware that Adria had a questionable safety record by and large, although I did know about the Trident collision eleven years previously. A moot point anyway, as the flights were effectively operated by Tarom (their aircraft and flight crew) with just the aircraft re-registered in Yugoslavia for the summer season. I do wonder if the intermediate approach to Ljubljana is not for the faint hearted ? I remember our Rombac 1-11, YU-ANS, turning violently to the left about five minutes from touchdown. God knows what we were avoiding but we lived to tell the tale and a fortnight later, 'NS was sitting on the apron at Ljubljana waiting to bring us home.

Perhaps even Jet2's smallest aircraft, the 737-300, is too big for a weekly Ljubljana service. A FlyBe or Stobart Embraer might be better suited.

[jensdad]

Did JAT ever use their 737-300s on their Air Yugoslavia charter work ?

They did indeed. The first aircraft to use Newcastle's parallel taxiway was a JAT 737-300 :)

[slf001]

Just stumbled across this thread due to recent activity.
As WHBM mentioned in a ten year old post, the Tarom crews English wasn't always up to the standard that the U.K. CAA required.

In the summer of 1987, BIA had a Tarom 1-11 on lease which got grounded due to the language problems.
The replacement was a Middle East Airlines Boeing 707.
Turned out to be the only 707 I ever flew on when I managed to scrounge a return trip Gatwick to Naples from the tour rep for a nominal fee.

[Mooncrest]

I often used to monitor the LBA Airbands when the Adria/Tarom 1-11 was approaching and I don't remember any language difficulties at all. The pilots spoke English with a distinctive Eastern European accent but were every bit as clear as the Wardair 747 pilots who used to arrive at LBA at much the same time on Monday morning. On the other hand, Tarom had only to satisfy the Yugoslav authorities of their aviation English competence, not the CAA.

[rog747]

the problem surfaced again in the late 90's iirc about UK tour operators and seat brokers chartering eastern european airlines at that time for seasonal work due to the decline of small or niche UK charter airlines -
we had lost AE CKT BIA FCA IEA Airways Intl Cymru Amber Air Ambassadair Leisure Intl BWA and DA all in the 90's and we were left with just the biggies BY AIH and JMC and family owned MON...
no small ones at all - and now we have none really as MON is gone.

the EU stepped in as iirc they tried to use JAT and possibly aviogenex after the Yugo war as they had spare a/c sitting around
and I think viking and/or goldcrest brought them into the UK one summer and the CAA and the EU banned them - I seem to think that is when transwede got a toe hold into ops out of LGW

now all the niche airlines operating in the UK are pretty much now EU or eastern european or turkish such as Germania ASL Volotea Albastar Small Planet Freebird smartlynx etc - we have no niche carriers left except maybe Titan and Flybe who have the odd own IT charters for corsica menorca skiathos or skiing

ironically BA now for past few years operate a large IT charter program at weekends from LHR and BACF with the EMB fleet from the provincials in england IOM and Scotland

[rog747]

jetstream7

no menton that on records that BY leased this a/c but I guess they did do subs from you guys comments
It was fully leased to KT in 1984

[rog747]

NCL's IT 1960's expansion was very much due to BKS getting Brits then 2 new Tridents in 1969 and Airways holidays having large holiday programmes from there plus also MME and LBA (viscounts only for Leeds though)

LJU today has quite a few Easy jet flights a week from LTN LGW STN and MAN plus from germany too

[Mooncrest]

It's encouraging to read that easyJet fly into Ljubljana from a few UK airports. What is less encouraging is that Ryanair, Jet2 et al aren't doing likewise, unless I'm mistaken. Wizz to Doncaster may be a future possibility, assuming an Airbus narrowbody isn't too big. Ljubljana could well be something of a niche destination without the clout of its Croatian cousins.

[rog747]

LJU has a 10000 ft runway

[Mooncrest]

Yes, the runway is very adequate. I was trying to suggest that Ljubljana city and the lakes and mountains may not have the touristy pull of the Adriatic coast destinations and would thus be more suited to small regional jets. Adria Airways themselves used to fly CRJ aircraft; I don't know if they still do.

As far as I remember, PH-TVP didn't receive any Britannia titles, logos etc. It was simply white with Transavia titles and its registration. Perhaps it was a hurriedly-arranged sub-charter, giving little time to 'Britanniafy' the aircraft. As it stayed on the Dutch register, it may not have been documented by the UK CAA. That's my theory anyway. The fact that it was the only 737 to do the PUY-LBA-PUY rotation in 1983 suggests it was brought in for specific routes only, to keep life simple !

[rog747]

the transavia 737 was an ADV model so maybe BY used it subbing it for LBA flights due to the short runway if it had -15 or -17 engines
BY did have their own ADV models by the early 80's afaik but they may have all been being used elsewhere - JMK JTR and JSI spring to mind really needing ADV models at the time
I was with MON at the time (1986) and our 4 737's then were all ADV

[Mooncrest]

Britannia's own 737s were regulars at LBA from 1976 but it was usually the Advanced model that did the honours. I doubt the originals such as G-AVRN could even have reached Palma in one hop off the then 5400 ft runway.

PH-TVP was certainly a busy aeroplane. As well as working for her Dutch masters, she found herself flying for British Airways and Air Malta before they had their own 737s, as well as Britannia.

[DanAir89]

With the resurgence of this thread thought I’d add that yes they did use the 733’s on charter work. 722’s were used on NCL - DBV through the 80’s until 87 when the 733’s took over and were used until 89 or 90. As a youngster flew This route on the 733 in 89.

Have some great pictures of DBV on a Saturday morning with equal measures of Jat, aviogenex and Adria on the ramp.

My my dad had always wanted to go to Yugoslavia but I was terrefied of ending up on an AGX tu134 (both ugly, scarily noisy and I was aware of dubious Russian safety records!). Luckily he never pursued Bulgaria as a Balkan tu154 was also on my avoid list...

also in 89 AGX had virtually retired their tu134’s and were using 737’s and 727’s. A friend was travelling back from SPU to NCL when the usual
737 Yu-anx went tech (couldn’t shut the door). with minimal delay two Tu134’s which were just sitting at Spu were mobilised to operate the flight..would have been my worst nightmare!

[Mooncrest]

My brothers flew from Manchester to Split in 1991 on an Aviogenex TU134. Must have been nearly the end of the line for them by then. These aircraft never darkened LBA's doors. Aviogenex usually brought us their newly-acquired 732s but a 727 would occasionally drop in too.

Early in the 1987 season, LBA hosted two JAT 727s at the same time on a Sunday morning. There is a picture on Flickr of an Air Afrique-liveried example parked next to a regular JAT sistership. Super aeroplanes.

[Mooncrest]

Further to the Adria Rombac theme from thirteen years ago, I've just remembered that the final LJU-LBA rotation for summer 1987 was operated by an aircraft in Marmara livery, rather than the part Tarom, part Adria scheme we had hitherto seen. It could well have been YR-BCK. I guess the few aircraft that Adria had leased had by this time gone home to Bucharest so Tarom had to come up with a quick substitute.

[MAC 40612]

LBA 12/10/1987...YR-BCK on Adria flight in Marmara colours with TAROM titles.

[Mooncrest]

Thought so! Many thanks.

[LGS6753]

The reason that Yugoslavian (and Romanian/Bulgarian too) tour operators used locally registered aircraft was to earn and preserve as much hard currency (Sterling, marks, francs etc) as possible. Communism/socialism wrecks economies, and countries that suffer under that system invariably run out of money, so print more, thereby making their currency worthless. In order to pay for vital imports (like oil) the East European countries pre-1989 ran cheap package holidays for the express purpose of earning Western convertible currency.