BEA Airtours from Gatwick, 1971

[bisonrav]

I just discovered, thanks to someone putting flight data together for Gatwick, that my first flight ever was on a Comet 4B operated by BEA Airtours to Corfu, KT912, on May 10th 1971. Return was KT913 on May 24th.

I'm now looking for any clues whatsoever regarding the tail number or other interesting details about the operation in 1971 from Gatwick. Long shot, I know, but I thought it worth asking, just in case anyone who knows anyone with pilots logs - there were only 10 Comets I think at this time, and any information about where a frame may have been on those dates is useful for elimination. Also interested in finding ephemera from the period: in flight mags, photos, whatever. And which companies were BEA Airtours doing charters for at that time?

I know about the holdings in the Surrey Archive relating to the 1971 movements (and have viewed these - they don't cover the date needed). And in touch with someone who is collating information from other sources. So I've done all the stuff I think it's possible to do with Google and associated legwork.

I did find a lovely little promotional jigsaw on Ebay of one of the Comets. And dimly remember having this at the time. Also I drew a little picture of Corfu airport (old terminal) and the plane landing, complete with red wings for my school report (because we were shaving time out of term I had to write it all up), also noting that the in-flight meal was ham and chicken. Apart from that I remember being a little apprehensive of take off and landing, but concluding the in between bit was rather dull and unlikely to be eventful. I was 7 years old.

[Mr Mac]

A little older than you at 11 but I remember flying BEA Airtours to Alicante that summer. It was late June and my parents had come up from Santiago to see family and I had stayed in UK after school We went on holiday before returning to Chile and I too remember your Jigsaw. Interestingly due to flight time we travelled to London on overnight sleeper from Leeds, which was an experience in its self !! Flew back to Santiago on Iberia DC8 from Madrid, which had a very bright interior with deep Reds and Golds a step up from BEA Airtours , though on BEA we sat in seats around a table, two facing each other which was very different back then. I think there may have been 8 seats like that on board all the rest std.

[bisonrav]

Yes, the Comets had that configuration at the front. I do remember it, and I think the Dan Air Comet at East Fortune is still laid out like that.

[ATSA1]

Didn't the Comets have 3 + 2 seating too?
My first flight was also BEA Airtours, but in a B707-436, G-APFH, KT144 on July 25th 1973..Gatwick -Milan Malpensa

[DaveReidUK]

Didn't the Comets have 3 + 2 seating too?

Yes, although unlike the Caravelle/DC-9/1-11, the Comet had the triples on the port side.

[Mr Mac]

Bison Nav
Glad to see my little Grey Cells are still working though to be fair it was the mention of the Jigsaw which brought the memories back ! I am lucky to have flown many many times over the years and many are not memorable, but the combination of the sleeper and indeed jigsaw must have lodged in there. I did 2 flights a year to the UK and returns to Chile for 7 years and to be honest I can probably remember maybe 4 of note. One obviously being the first (many tears from Mum and a little from me !, but I was only 9) and one where we hit CAT where or near where the AF330 went down, and of course my last one.

Thanks for provoking the memories

[browndhc2]

Most if not all of the Airtours 4B's went to Dan Air. Not all saw service, some airframes being used as a source of spares. The only surviving 4B is G-APYD at Wroughton but alas she was not part of the KT fleet.

Regarding memorabilia the OP may like to know that their is an aviation collectors fair at the K2 leisure centre in Crawley this Sunday (12Th of September) from 10.00 am. I am in no way connected to the event and I hope mention of it does not breech any posting rules.

[chevvron]

I can recall the Airtours flights using the callsign 'Beatours' operating wef mid 1970; I was stationed at the radar unit on the northside at Heathrow at the time operating as a 'radar monitor'.
I'm sure that in 1974, RAE acquired two of these ex BEA aircraft because I remember 3 Comets ariving at Farnborough in August, two of which were 4Bs and one of which was 4C XV814 but I don't remember the other registrations; the two 4Bs then went to Lasham where presumably they were broken up by Dan Air who operated 4Cs at the time which were maintained by Dan Air at Lasham.

[Jn14:6]

XV814 was a Comet 4, not a 4C. Ex- G-APDF.

[chevvron]

I don't care, it was a lovely aircraft to fly in and it was my sad duty to log its final flight.

[bisonrav]

There's a great little film celebrating the start of the airline and associated package tours, including some lovely shots of the Comet, inside and out. And a rather wonderful captain. I'm not allowed to post URLs yet, but it can be found on Youtube by searching for BEA Airtours.

[WHBM]

I just discovered, thanks to someone putting flight data together for Gatwick, that my first flight ever was on a Comet 4B operated by BEA Airtours to Corfu, KT912, on May 10th 1971. Return was KT913 on May 24th.
In 1971 I believe that BEA Airtours was running 9 Comets. Two were based at Manchester, and all the rest at Gatwick. I also recall they were effectively sold out for the summer season with full utilisation (as full as you can do for such older aircraft), not quite certain how it would have been in May. Flights into other UK airports were generally just as a W from Gatwick, and there weren't too many of those either. It was a very Gatwick-centric operation. Principally holiday IT flights, of course, but they also got well in with midweek "student travel" charters to mainstream cities like Frankfurt or Madrid as well, in the days when scheduled service fares were notably high (I used to think how many of the passengers looked rather old to be students).

The Comets did have an upside, as Dan-Air also found, that their range was greater than the One-Eleven commonly used by others at the time, allowing them to handle Greece and The Canaries quite easily.

BEA started a mass-market holiday company called Enterprise, who were Airtours' best customer, and they also had a more upmarket brand Silver Wing, who used to use scheduled services from Heathrow, but progressively slipped in more Airtours flights from Gatwick, especially as BEA mainline gradually gave up Mediterranean holiday spots - on some of which they were still using Vanguards. Airtours also did well with consolidated flights for multiple smaller holiday companies, arranged through brokers, and could be found doing bits of work for quite a few of the other travel organisers of the era. They seemed to have a further niche in such charters to the socialist resorts, Yugoslavia or Bulgaria, that were not operated by the home airline from there, possibly by using BEA mainline contacts.

I believe the commercial management were a real gung-ho lot, who found the freedom they were given was a breath of fresh air away from their previous stodgy job progression back at mainline.

I did understand that in one or two deep winters BEA mainline suffered one of their regular Trident shortages at Heathrow, and the Comets came back to help out, having of course been billed well beforehand as withdrawn from scheduled services.

[bisonrav]

Thanks for the information. I did go to the Crawley fair, 6 year old in tow (he came home with a mass of free stuff stallholders felt he deserved to have), but didn't find any BEA Airtours material. I did buy the 1970/1 BEA Annual report and accounts on Ebay though and there are a couple of nice photos of a Comet and of the interior with a meal service I think to the front two seats as they're facing rearwards. And someone seems to be seated in the aisle for the purposes of the photograph at least.

But generally the airline does seem to be quite poorly served for memorabilia and ephemera, which of course makes it all the more interesting. There must have been an in-flight magazine; these do tend to get borrowed and so survive, but I've not seen anything at all of this sort (unless the BEA magazine was used). In retrospect I was extremely lucky to find the jigsaw I bought.

Thanks for the information on Enterprise WHBM - the name is familiar in retrospect. We would have holiday brochures in the house from Christmas onwards, all sorts of companies. They are really hard to find now, but when you do they are fascinating slices of social history. You can reconstruct a lot of memories from little bits and pieces like this, it's a very interesting process. Something will turn up and trigger a recollection, which will connect to (say) a holiday photo, and eventually a picture comes back into focus. I don't suppose I'll ever know the tail number of my first flight, but at least I have it down to 9 possibilities now.

I was wondering what happens to flight crew logs for civil aviation. These flights are sadly now past the horizon where crew could be expected to be still with us, but I suppose their logs are heirlooms, or sold or collected, and will contain an amazing amount of detail.

[rog747]

As WHBM mentions KT (Beatours) started up for summer 1970 with the Comet 4B's and their flights were known and called in the terminal as 'Tango' but dunno why lol
BUA, Laker, Dan Air, Caledonian, and Court Line were all furious that the state owned airline were setting up as the competition in their perilous IT markets.

Enterprise Holidays, Flair, Hickie Borman, and Martin Rooks Holidays were all owned by BEA group thus KT flew for all of them, plus also for Thomas Cook Holidays too.
Silver Wing was also a BEA company, more upmarket and had used BEA scheduled flights mostly until KT was established.

The Comet had shown it had the longer range and could fly the longer holiday routes to Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Canary Islands.
Clarksons had first used Dan Air Comets for these routes in lieu of Court Line 1-11's.
(Previously British United and Caledonian Bristol Britannia's were used for such longer flights)

In 1971 the Enterprise summer brochure was emblazoned with a double page spread on the 'new' Boeing 707's that KT would use to fly for their holidaymakers - at the same time Monarch had bought Boeing 720B's to replace Britannia's for Cosmos Holidays, ''Look what we have bought for you!'' was their summer 1971 brochure tagline.
Dan Air, BMA and Lloyd International had all bought a pair of old 707-321's to join in the big jet charters.
Donaldson would soon follow to buy 4 of the ex Pan Am guzzlers.
KT had wanted to buy some AA 707-123B's but HM Govt blocked this purchase and KT were forced to take the ex BOAC 707-436's.
KT did lease in 707's from Geminair (Possibly via Templewood) and also from Dan Air.
Channel Airways were also looking at buying ex Continental Airways Boeing 707's.

Dan Air had been flying Comets on IT's since 1966 and were adding many examples to it's fleet sought from BOAC, East Africa, the Middle East, South America and Malaysia.
Channel Airways ceased operations at the end of 1971 having bought 5 ex BEA and Olympic Airways Comets in 1970 for the large Lyons Tours IT contract.
4 examples then went to Dan's in 1972. 1 of the 5, G-ARDI was DBR and was used for spares only and was WFU at SEN.
This was the only Comet ever to fly into SEN.

The last KT Comet 4b flight was 31 OCT 1973.

[WHBM]

I remember BEA Airtours had to place cards on the check-in desks advising passengers that their flights would be announced as "Tango". Like @Rog747 this mystified me, why not "BEA" or "Airtours" or even "Kilo Tango".

The Channel Airways Comet 4B fleet meanwhile were the bottom of the secondhand market, Sqn Ldr Jack Jones picked them up at effectively scrap prices. BEA Airtours had taken all the BEA mainline fleet, Channel bought the ex-Olympic Airways ones. These had long been run and maintained in a common pool with BEA, but in the last year Olympic really let them go, and I believe they had been stored at Athens for a while. They were the most disreputable-looking aircraft I have ever seen in mainline service, I recall one in 1971 at Manchester. Channel had patchily and minimally overpainted the remnants of the Olympic livery with blues and whites somewhat different in hue to the rest. They were subject to some lengthy summertime delays, which made the national press, although one of the reasons was suppressed, that Channel were On Stop for credit with some spares suppliers for not paying previous bills, not least the aircraft's manufacturer Hawker Siddeley, and were having to wait until funds were wired through.

A curious fact about Airtours Comets is their very first and last Comet commercial flights were by the same aircraft, G-ARJL.

[bean]

WHBM i agree with you about the catastrophe which was Channel Airways strangely, every photo i've looked at on the net of Channel Aitways Comets (and there are many all im colour) do not show the patchy paint to which you refer.
I'm going to start a thread about Channel rather than drift of this threads topic

[bean]

WHBM. Now found a photo of Comet G-APYD looking as you described

[Jonnie Chan]

Thanks for the information. I did go to the Crawley fair, 6 year old in tow (he came home with a mass of free stuff stallholders felt he deserved to have), but didn't find any BEA Airtours material. I did buy the 1970/1 BEA Annual report and accounts on Ebay though and there are a couple of nice photos of a Comet and of the interior with a meal service I think to the front two seats as they're facing rearwards. And someone seems to be seated in the aisle for the purposes of the photograph at least.

But generally the airline does seem to be quite poorly served for memorabilia and ephemera, which of course makes it all the more interesting. There must have been an in-flight magazine; these do tend to get borrowed and so survive, but I've not seen anything at all of this sort (unless the BEA magazine was used). In retrospect I was extremely lucky to find the jigsaw I bought.

Thanks for the information on Enterprise WHBM - the name is familiar in retrospect. We would have holiday brochures in the house from Christmas onwards, all sorts of companies. They are really hard to find now, but when you do they are fascinating slices of social history. You can reconstruct a lot of memories from little bits and pieces like this, it's a very interesting process. Something will turn up and trigger a recollection, which will connect to (say) a holiday photo, and eventually a picture comes back into focus. I don't suppose I'll ever know the tail number of my first flight, but at least I have it down to 9 possibilities now.

I was wondering what happens to flight crew logs for civil aviation. These flights are sadly now past the horizon where crew could be expected to be still with us, but I suppose their logs are heirlooms, or sold or collected, and will contain an amazing amount of detail.


Hi Bisonrav,
I am pleased to say we are not all dead yet! Praise the Lord. I joined BEA Airtours on Comet IVBs as an FO in April 70 and was flying on the line by 23 June 1970. Base training at Prestwick involved right hand seat and panel operation. I was ex Vanguards. BEA Airtours operated a three pilot crew with the two copilots changing seats sector by sector. A lot of fun to be had operating a pukka engineer's panel which was to serve us in good stead for the B707 later. Checking my logbook, I see my first flight was to Split (Yugoslavia, then) as P3 U/T. P3 training and consolidation lasted until 23 July when I then did RHS clearance before joining the regular operation. I was just 23! I had joined BEA from Hamble in Dec 1967. I too have a copy of the jigsaw! BEA, later British Airtours lasted until March 31st 1988 before becoming the new Caledonian Airways. I enjoyed every minute of it and flew B707s and L1011s as a copilot before my command on B737s and then back to L1011s as Captain, subsequently as Training Captin before Airtours demise. Happy days.

[bisonrav]

Hi Bisonrav,
I am pleased to say we are not all dead yet! Praise the Lord. I joined BEA Airtours on Comet IVBs as an FO in April 70 and was flying on the line by 23 June 1970. Base training at Prestwick involved right hand seat and panel operation. I was ex Vanguards. BEA Airtours operated a three pilot crew with the two copilots changing seats sector by sector. A lot of fun to be had operating a pukka engineer's panel which was to serve us in good stead for the B707 later. Checking my logbook, I see my first flight was to Split (Yugoslavia, then) as P3 U/T. P3 training and consolidation lasted until 23 July when I then did RHS clearance before joining the regular operation. I was just 23! I had joined BEA from Hamble in Dec 1967. I too have a copy of the jigsaw! BEA, later British Airtours lasted until March 31st 1988 before becoming the new Caledonian Airways. I enjoyed every minute of it and flew B707s and L1011s as a copilot before my command on B737s and then back to L1011s as Captain, subsequently as Training Captin before Airtours demise. Happy days.

Lovely to hear all of this fascinating background. Of course my next question is what you were doing on and around the 10th May and 24th May 1971; not so much because you might have been on my flight to Corfu from Gatwick and return, but because identifying aircraft that were somewhere else is useful as part of the process of elimination! And of course should you be in touch with ex colleagues or know families, I'd love to know and perhaps pass the queries on. Do contact me by direct message if you like, I can pass on email and phone contacts. And the list of aircraft is mouth-watering to my older self. There was so much more variety back then, and I well remember looking down at all the types from the Gatwick and later Ringway, and being deafened by the noise. Comets in particular were LOUD.

I have returned to Corfu a few times recently. Much has changed, it's much less of an occasion to fly, you can breathe in the cabin, and hardly anyone notices the Alps any more. Children don't get the in-flight flight deck tour of course either. But much of it is still recognizable in terms of basic process, and in particular the northbound approach over the water remains spectacular. The old terminal is still there - we didn't use it again despite holidaying there from 1972 to 1975 - and rather sad and decrepit, I remember it as a bustling place, smelling of foreign tobacco, very small.