BEA & Cyprus Airways Gulf routes

[Cremeegg]

I wonder who has a long memory.

Did BEA ever operate as far east as Doha in their own right or did they only operate so far east when they had aircraft on loan to Cyprus Airways.

A relatives old log books show in April 1960 Viscount flights NIC - BEY - KWI - BAH - DOH and return. I know they spent some time on secondment to Cyprus Airways training them up on Viscounts yet the logbooks make no mention of being on behalf of CY. Other BEA Viscounts when operated for other airlines like TAP are clearly mentioned as such in the logbook. But not these flights. DOH seems rather a long way east for BEA to me.

Can anyone elaborate?

[cyflyer]

I did a Cyprus Airways article in Air pictorial back in 1999, and you had me looking through trying to find references to Doha. A slightly complex period of time for those airlines mentioned. The simple answer is , they operated to Doha via Cyprus Airways who operated the Nicosia-Doha segment. From late fifties until the time you mention April 1960, Cyprus Airways per-say was non functional due to the political troubles. The routes were operated by BEA during this time, but I don't believe they went as far as Doha. 1960 Cyprus became independent and thats when Cyprus Airways as a company re-emerged on the scene, with BEA still holding about 25%. This would have been the time that Cyprus Airways would have been expanding to places such as Doha, and introducing locals as flight crews on the Viscounts. This is most probably the time mentioned in your relatives logbook. Actually on 1st April 1960 they introduced the inaugural Comet 4b service on the London -Nicosia route under Cyprus Airways, which would have left the Viscounts plying the Eastern routes.

incidenally Cremeegg (http://www.pprune.org/members/174150-cremeegg), I've sent you a PM.

[scotbill]

BEA did indeed operate as far as Doha with Viscounts on behalf of Cyprus Airways. The routing was Nicosia - Beirut - Kuwait - Doha night-stop. My logbook records that very integration almost exactly 52 years ago in February 1961. In those days Doha was a small town and Beirut was a very pleasant and exciting place to stay. The Viscount cabin crew were BEA as well but later, on the Comet4b, Cypriot cabin crew were used. As far as I recall, the Comet operated only to Beirut, Tel Aviv and Cairo from Nicosia (and Athens of course)

National attitudes in Cyprus at the time were very conservative and I believe it was considered scandalous that Cypriot girls were night-stopping in Athens unchaperoned. In fact they did not mix socially with the many BEA crew in Athens when it was the centre of Med operations.

BEA also operated for Malta to Tripoli and Benghazi as well as Catania - again with BEA cabin crew.

[WHBM]

BEA Comets did get as far as Doha as well. Here's a BEA timetable from summer 1961 showing the services.

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/complete/be61/be61-17.jpg

These were not actually BEA commercial services but operated under charter agreement to Cyprus Airways, which had a long history of organising this way, and BEA had a significant ownership in the airline anyway. They also had for years two BEA Viscounts operating shorter routes from Nicosia, which would be outstationed for some months (as once the Comets came on line there were no BEA Viscount schedules all the way there for them to use to rotate the aircraft), but they were still from the BEA fleet. Notice this timetable, from 1 July 1961, is only a few months after Scotbill's experiences (above) with Viscounts. This was at the time the Comets were coming on line.

[scotbill]

Thank you for that - I had forgotten the Nicosia connection to Ankara-Istanbul-Athens. It seems to disappear from my logbook after December 1964. Athens-Istanbul-Ankara was then a BEA service.

I joined the Comet fleet in March 1963 - but if the Gulf operation was still in the schedules by then, I never operated it.

Kuwait - Beirut was a bit of a stretch for the V806 with headwinds

On reflection, my reference to a Cairo operation may have been as a substitution for Olympic, as we operated a common Comet fleet.

[Cremeegg]

Thanks for that - I'm just surprised that there is no mention in the logbook of the flights being on behalf of CY when flights operated for Malta Airways & TAP were annotated as such.

The KWI - BEY sectors all shown as either 3:10 or 3:25.

[Flightwatch]

My late father did several secondments to Cyprus Airways over the years finishing around ’74 when the Jersey base, where he lived, was closed. By that time there were two 806s painted in CY colours for their regional services which returned to LHR only occasionally for servicing. As far as I am aware these were flown exclusively by B(E)A flight crew with CY cabin crew. The temporary postings were extremely popular and coveted and the Jersey base only got a look in when they had a surplus. His last posting was just before the Turkish “invasion” or “liberation” depending on which side of the green line you sit. The Viscounts had either been withdrawn by then or were not in town as they escaped unscathed and were subsequently sold to Cambrian, by then a part of the nascent BA.

Ironically father flew for CY for five years after his retirement from BA on the 1-11 on the same routes he used to fly on the Viscount, albeit from Larnaca rather than Nicosia. This included LCA-BAH/DXB which was a bit of a stretch for the 1-11 too