BOAC LHW-BOG route during 50s, 60s and 70s

[b377]

Any BOAC pilots on the LHR-BOG El Dorado route?

Planes used:

Late 50s to early 60s.. Britannia 300
Mid 60s .................... B 707
Late 60s early 70s ...... Super VC10
Late 70s ( B Cal) ...... DC-10-30
Mid 80s 'til 2004 ....... B 747 -400

[Skipness One Echo]

He means LHR as 99% of people with a brain have already worked out. It's clear in the context what he means.

[b377]

see IATA code correction above ...

[arem]

Yes - on 707's (320B/C) during the 70's - why?

[Captain Airclues]

Operated there on the SVC10, the 747 (Classic) and the 747-400. My first visit was SVC10 G-ASGD on 11th June 1971, transit en-route from Caracas to Lima.

Dave

[b377]

I was still in school in those days (late 60s early 70s) but would often go to the international passenger building terrace at El Dorado to watch the Super VC10 startup, taxi and takeoff on runway (13/31) - the only one in those days and of course fly over our house once a week.

Just to put this into a time frame The Prisoner, The Avengers and The Saint were all on local TV. I actually flew on a Britannia BOG - LHR in 1961 and back. A very long trip with all that Caribbean island hopping including CCS. Got a pic of family from our return trip Britannia in Barbados .

More recently 80s/90s until 2004 I flew the route as a pax in BA 747s but it was a great shame when BA stopped flying to BOG & CCS in 2004. Why? Never quite knew the reason for this as it was a historic route since BOAC. It was a very convenient route compared to what I have to do now - flights via Madrid, Paris or USA and no free drinks !

[ONE GREEN AND HOPING]

..........You don't say why you want to know, but I was one of the merry band at BCal who operated LGW CCS BOG on the DC10. Enjoyable long slip (layover) at the coast at CCS, and a couple or three days at BOG in the city. Enjoyed days off in the hills from BOG......beautiful countryside. We remember the holding pattern over that VOR in the pre-approach area close in amongst the pretty rocks where in addition to the usual mental arithmatic for the pattern, one needed to bear in mind the rule-of-thumb ( 1 min TAS over Pi/3.142??.....forgotten a lot of stuff now) to apply to a groundspeed compatable with an accurate radius of turn when at or below en-route safety altitude. Since Sod's law seem to indicate that the VOR was on occasions a popular nesting spot for CB's, it served to sharpen up the concentration a notch......wasn't it there, or maybe Quito where on a bright day, occasional small shards of aluminium amongst the lumpy bits would glint in the sunlight as a grim reminder to aviators.....? On the 10, I seem to remember that due to the altitude, it sometimes could be tricky starting an engine (CF6) without exceeding the starter motor limitations.

Following the merger with BA, also operated the B747-400 (maybe also the 100/200 in 1989?). Same pleasant few days at CCS, but no time off at BOG. I seem to remember that in pre-BCal Caledonian, we operated into BOG and one or two other places in the area on the 707......maybe on the Britannia as well, but that would have been ad hoc....not scheduled.

One mistake I made in Bogota, was spending the last few coins left over from my per-deum on some what appeared to be freeze dried spiders. I guess they were Tarantulas and around nine inches betwitxt extremities. These had been hugely popular with my own children, who took them as static pets to school and super-glued one high on a wall of the downstairs lav. Home being in England, encounters with giant scuttling predatory invertebrates are simply not an issue normally to be considered. (These ones would last a few months and then crumble to dust.) The mistake was giving a couple to someone else's children who promised that their mother would be fine with it .....they lied.....

Somewhere on the web are photos of what I think I remember was BCal's flagship DC10, registration G-DCI0, having been sold off together with the rest of the fleet - eight, I think - and all converted to freighters. Inbound from Miami or similar, it had been further converted to a crumpled mess in some field on the approach to BOG. What remained of the front end appeared just about survivable for the crew, so I hope it was.

[b377]

You don't say why you want to know

ONE GREEN AND HOPING (http://www.pprune.org/members/147260-one-green-and-hoping)

Did you really fly BOAC Britannias to BOG ? Amazing, early 60s no doubt.

This exact plane brought me to the UK on 25 July 1979 ( 30 years this year). Never flew on a DC10 since. Think it went to Gemini cargo.
My father had accutally flown BCal to UK in March 79 just before the Chicago incident that grounded all DC10s. His return flight to BOG was in a BCal 707 but by July all DC10s were flying again.

As to why... well I saw so many BOAC BCal BA planes over the years coming into Bogota I thought it would be nice to see if real people actually flew those planes... and in passing to ask about what you thought of the local Navaids available to you in those days. Not sure if the 10 had a similar triple FMS INS systems as the 747 - just set in waypoints & relax until you captured the BOG ILS ?

As a pax was once in a BA 747 400 holding - waiting ATC thumbs up to land at BOG circling in cloud ( dark grey stuff at about 5:30 PM) didn't like it one bit just hopping that TCAS was working as it should and ATC knew what they were doing like keeping other traffic well away from us!




http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/8/3/0/0301038.jpg

[Albert Driver]

Holding at BOG could be interesting as the lowest level in the stack was below company Minimum Safe Altitude. Bog would clear you down and immediately clear the next aircraft down to your level. If you refused the clearance they would suddenly be unable to understand English and of course the local traffic already coming down on top of you would be genuinely non comprendo. So down you went. Sometimes it's better to be in cloud!

The only TCAS available in those days in IMC was the sound of another aeroplane's engines - another experience I have to thank Bogota for .....
As for triple INS in a civil VC10, you must be joking! When INS was eventually fitted the unit was located in the part of the electrics bay beneath the forward galley sink. If the sink overflowed and there were no radio aids within range you could suddenly find yourself down to doppler ... and the sextant.

Ending the Bogota route was an act of compassion!

[b377]

hmm, at least i'd like to think that you guys were well looked after when you did an overnight stop in BOG - Hilton , Tequendama , full night life?

No INS on a VC10? How did you manage oceanic crossings? You'll tell me you stood on a stool looking out an astrodome trigging the pole star?

[ONE GREEN AND HOPING]

........B377 - Good photo of BM.

No, I was never privileged to be a real BOAC pilot, but in 1988 following the BCal merger with BA, the British Flag Carrier which, consisting as it did of the combined personnel of BOAC and BEA, I expect most of us could imagine what it must have been like. Once re-mustered and re-trained to the Corporation ways, we certainly found that there were many new comforts and pamperings compared to our previous lifestyle, however customs such as the Captain staying at a seperate hotel to the rest of the crew were rapidly disappearing. What I meant was that from what I recall from my own Caledonian days.....Caledonian, being the company that through Government intervention later got together with British United (BUA) to form BCal, the so-called UK 'Second Force' operator in 1970........our Britannias were quite likely to be seen in that part of the world on ad hoc charter ops. I'm thinking 1964 onwards. I am not presently located where I can check the records, but I can remember operating to BOG on the Caledonian or maybe post 1970, BCal 707 scheduled. I'm fairly sure that our Britannias didn't disappear until around 1970. During the early 1960's that you refer to, Caledonian operated DC7c's which, in my own case I was very disappointed to miss out on.

The DC10's came with a double Litton INS, as I recall (again, I don't have my old manuals to hand). The 707's in general, had a single or double INS retrofit, or merely stuck with Loran A, various Doppler arrangements, sextants/Polarpath 'Sky Compass' for Northern grid nav, and/or an upgraded VLF radio-nav system that had a keypad arrangement similar to INS. Did the VLF course....but never used it. The BOAC/BA 100/200 747's and Concorde had Delco Carousel INS which by the time we 'Clingons' from BCal got our hands on them had been upgraded and glued to FMS....and a very good job they made of it too. Later even came EGPWS, a central glass nav screen and bits of 744 type autopilot stuff. However I think INS wind readout values in turns still had to be treated with a certain amount of caution. Not just holding descents as at BOG, but as in curved approaches like HKG (Kai Tak, as was) and Canarsis onto 13L/R JFK.

Although my personal favourite aircraft that doesn't have propellers has always been the BAC1-11, the DC10 seemed to many of us - both pax and crew - the most comfortable big aircraft for long sectors. A delight to handle, and loads of spare grunt for awkward situations.......plus of course big cockpit windows, which in gentler times was appreciated by the many visitors as well as the crew.

......Back to Bogota specific, and this is the PPRuNe link to the ex BCal DC10 that sadly was trashed on landing. you will note that the accident report cites a pothole on the runway........must have been a big one!

http://www.pprune.org/spectators-balcony-spotters-corner/297693-british-caledonian-what-if.html

Page 2 refers. Posts #26 and #28

[Captain Airclues]

b337

The INS was not fitted to the VC10 until the mid 70's (apart from an experimental unit in the late 60's). Prior to that we would navigate using Astro and Loran fixes, as well as Consol and ADF. We used a periscopic sextant that we pushed through an airtight hole in the cockpit roof. Three stars would be 'shot' using a two minute run on each, which the sextant then averaged out. A Loran tube was fitted at the rear of the flight deck above the navigators station. We also used the weather ships for a fix and a chat.

Dave

[b377]

Thank you chaps much appreciate all comments.

Re Centurion accident I was aware of it but had no idea it involved an ex-BCal DC10. Wonder what the outcome of the investigation was, if it was proved to be a pot hole in the old runway 13L, then airport authorities could be liable.

No doubt BOG must have been an 'interesting' port of call.

[ONE GREEN AND HOPING]

.....Appologies for further drift, but just out of general interest, does anyone know where the result of the final enquiry into the Centurian DC10-30 (ex BCAL G-DCIO) accident can be found? The brief summary viewable in the link at the end of my post above appears a little weak, to say the least. I'm thinking that disappearing at a rate of knots into the countryside off the far end of the runway has to result from something more complex than just a 'pothole'.....
ASN Aircraft accident McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30F N189AX Bogotá-Eldorado Airport (BOG) (http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20040428-0)

Must be around ten years ago on an overnight stop, I had to park a small aircraft over by the maintenance base at Manchester, UK. I was along side a line of identical DC10-30's. As I recall they were painted overall grey with no visible markings. I was told that it was the complete BCAL fleet to be - or having been - converted to freight config.....got a photo somewhere....