BOAC 707 crew video

[The SSK]

Halcyon Days: Some of the 436s were in all economy config (174Y)and would normally be used on the North Atlantic affinity group charters etc to Toronto/New York etc

As was the daily BA605/606 London-Prestwick-Toronto vv when I was at PIK in 1969. 174 hot lunches between LHR and PIK!

The usual configuration of the 707s was 16F130Y, occasionally 20/120. Super VC10s were normally 16/123 and Standards 12/99.

[Halcyon Days]

The tech stops via Winnipeg (and sometimes Calgary ) were also to change cabin crew.
Believe it or not-BASSA union rules in those days would not permit the cabin crew to continue-but the flight deck crew still could and did-whereas the cabin crew slipped.
So even if a flight could make it direct from London-due to tailwinds/light loads etc-it would still have to stop to make a cabin crew change. It was just one of those crazy union driven agreements that prevailed in those days-that went a long way towards making it a major financial loser-but nobody seemed to care then-as it was government owned?

[Jackbr]

Mrs Thatcher took care of that!

[wayoutwest]

hi halcyon days.it would be great to see some extracts from your logs from a time when flying was fun.

[Speedbird48]

Halcyon Days,
We must have met.
The 436's were not exactly overpowered and a hot day and a heavy load would need the Hatton Cross lights to be Green at times!! With the use of the easterly runways at LHR the wind would be light and normally it would be warmish in the summer.
I remember a Bermuda trip on a hot day using 28R and I looked up from the gauges, and we had not reached V1, to see the Techincolor factory chimney passing on the right, all wheels firmly on the ground and we were into the narrow part of the Western end of the runway!! At this point I gritted my teeth a bit hard and had a repair job done in Bermuda. The repair to the broken tooth is still there to remind me.
On another trip to Toronto we were so heavy that we flight planned to Gander as that was all we could make initially. Later we were able to get higher and replan to Toronto with minimums.
The Bulgaria trip you mention would have been a normal charter as Airtours had not got into longer trips. I did one with DC Davies as the Captain and he was his usual difficult self making it interesting with the Eastern block folks.
Towards the end of their mainline service the 436's did quite a lot of interesting charter trips and I seemed to get chosen for a lot of them!!!
Speedbird 48.

[Halcyon Days]

The Varna I operated is shown in my log book as a Captain Brister (although I may have entered incorrectly-Bristow-sounds more likely??) 29/09/73 on
G-APFF.
We had 147 pax out and 174 inbound.
I was only there a few years and then went and got a real job working in ops for various airlines!! I rarely flew twice with any cabin crew I knew to be honest -although would occasionaly bump into someone down route that I knew. I dont have a D.C.Davies in the book either-but there were plenty of others such as Hendy/Parkin/Parry/Lymn/Hart/Nye/Tate and who would forget Walpole!!



Wayoutwest-pm me your home e mail address and I will send a copy of a couple of years entries-which I have now transposed onto an Excel spreadsheet. Will give you some idea of the routes/a/c used etc.

[WHBM]

This Varna charter in 1973 (from Heathrow or Gatwick, may I ask ?) is a notable rarity. A small inclusive tour business had been built up to Bulgaria at this time, which was wholly in the hands of Balkan Holidays, a Bulgarian government agent, although with offices in London. Other UK tour operators did not go there; the whole thing was a foreign exchange raising operation. They chartered entirely from the Balkan Airlines, the Bulgarian national airline, with a range of eastern types. They always seemed to have good commercial skills and their holidays were cheap, and featured in many travel agencies. Their departures were entirely daytime on Saturday and Sunday (note this 1973 date was a Saturday) which was a real bonus for cheap trips compared to overnight Tuesday flights to Palma. They were apparently particularly popular with those who favoured socialism (especially coal miners I read), and departure points like East Midlands and Glasgow were common. In the season Balkan Airlines required several of their quite small fleet of jets to operate the UK charters each weekend, each aircraft doing two round trips in a day from Varna or Bourgas.

So what were BOAC doing with a charter full both ways going there ? I would presume a subcharter of some sort to Balkan Airlines, as a sub for one of their Tu154s. A state-owned airline in Bulgaria would presumably look to the state-owned carrier in another country as their first contact (especially as BA and Balkan were in pool on scheduled services to Sofia). Still, most surprising. 174 pax on the inbound is, by no mean coincidence, the seating capacity of an all-economy Balkan Tu154A of the time.

[Halcyon Days]

I am afraid I dont know much about the history of it-(it was from and to LHR)
or which tour operator it was for. I certainly remember Balkan in later years doing flights through most of the UK regional airports with 154s and I think 134s.
I can recall-we were delayed on the ground for some forgotten reason and that the Chief steward made an apology on the P.A and added some slightly insensitive comment along the lines of "I bet you cant all wait to get away from this god forsaken country" (cant recall the actual words-but I am sure you get the gist of it.)
He was then very embarrassed to have to publicly apologise again a short while later-as it turned out that amongst the passengers was some bigwig from the Bulgarian ministry of Tourism-so I suspect it may have been a special charter of some sort-possibly carrying travel agents?

[Speedbird48]

Halcyon Days,

It was Dave Brister that you flew with. He went on to the Concorde fleet later.
The Varna flights were all from LHR and I see from my log book that these odd ball charters were mainly in 1973 and they included Tahitti in January, Bourgas in May, Kansas City on September, and a very interesting one to Nairobi via Cairo in December.
Again going back to the 436's lack of performance the Nairobi take off was at 1am and all we could flight plan was to Luxor, and even then with a restricted load. We then replanned in the air and made it to Cairo. Whereas the VC10 could leave Nairobi at mid-day and go direct to LHR with a full load. The curvature of the earth was made for Boeing and the 436 and earlier versions until the first 747's came along when they used it all up.
In my previous post I mentioned that I was waiting to hear V1 as we passed Technicolor on 28R when in actual fact V1 had already been called and I was wondering where "V2 and Rotate" had got to!!! The Colnbrook cabbage field was awful close!!

Speedbird 48.

[merlinxx]

WHBM

Varna with Balkan Hols...TABSO operated into LGW with IL-18s in the mid 60s for Balkan hols. I know as I got trays of the nicest peaches & peach brandy off those flights, crew had to be escorted to duty free during the turnround

[Halcyon Days]

Didnt do any trips on 707s through Nairobi-it was always VC.10s.
We did various shuttles based in Nairobi though-and you would operate Nairobi/Blantyre/Nairobi-or Nairobi/Mauritius/Nairobi perhaps.
There was a short 4 or 5 hour slip there and we would be shuttled to a nearby hotel-and would just have time for a swim/lunch etc and it was back into uniform for the return leg. All very civilised!!
Did a trip through the Seychelles-(NBO/SEZ/CMB) when the flight deck crew slipped and we went on to Columbo.
The new crew had been staying in a hotel in the North of the island-and so the story went- had made "friends" with a female resident and decided to show off the aircraft a bit.
We only had 10 pax on board-so after take off -kept low and flew all around the Island at about 1000ft (approx)-before climbing back and on route to CMB. Would liked to have seen it from the ground-but it was very impressive watching out of the window from the rear row of seats. Before take off we had been told by the Chief to take a window seat-instead of our normal crew seats-as he knew what was going to happen.

[XV490]

My sister, who flew as cabin crew in both 707s and VC10s with BOAC/BA, said the video brought back happy memories. She recalls the Kuwaiti royal family chartering a BOAC VC10 in the early 70s, the crew themselves being treated royally afterwards at some palace or other. Beats Ryanair.

[Discorde]

Delayed response!

Why was that 707 so nose-down right to the threshold?

The nose down pitch attitude on final approach is a characteristic of aircraft without high-lift leading edge devices when their trailing edge flaps are extended. Examples include DC8s and early 707s. Subsequent jet transports featured leading edge devices (slats) which require nose-higher pitch attitudes when extended to achieve the correct angle of attack for the wings. These devices improve take-off and landing performance significantly (greater lifting capabilities and less runway length required).

[ExSp33db1rd]

See also the BOAC B707 Ops in the 1960's thread. ( Merge ? )

The Varna I operated is shown in my log book as a Captain Brister (although I may have entered incorrectly-Bristow-sounds more likely??) 29/09/73 on

Correct, Dave flew Concorde and then moved to SIA 747's. There was also a Capt. Norman Bristow, tho' I think he spent more time on the VC-10, where he once featured in an Australian TV Ad. for the VC-10

Now here's an area that has always interested me to know more. I had read that BOAC provided a steward to serve the crew on freighters

.
Correct, tho' stewardesses were not allowed in my time, but I believe they served on freighters after that.

Once flew as F/O on a freighter service with the then 707 Flt. Mgr. He had attended an ICAO ( or IATA ? ) conference where, he said, they laughed at him when he told them that BOAC carried a steward on a freighter. I asked him if he told them what he paid his pilots, so that they could laugh at him some more. ( I didn't get a landing for the rest of that trip ! )

BOAC operated the -336 versions, spoken of, as Combi's, i.e. a freight door at the back, with the last section being partitioned off from the pax. cabin when used in the freight mode as opposed to the full pax mode. The ones operating the Tokyo - Moscow service had to load special high specific gravity fuel in Tokyo to make it. I don't think (?) Helsinki could be nominated as an alternate, the Soviets insisting that any flight entering the USSR must land in the USSR, not overfly. Getting the weather for Moscow was a nightmare, and one Capt. diverted to Leningrad as a result, only to find that there was no hotel accom. and the crew were "accommodated" in the airport Police cells overnight - unlocked of course - to satisfy "minimum crew rest". Can't recall what happened to the pax. Next day he was refused a flight plan to London as his "licence" was Moscow - London, not Leningrad - London, so he had to fly down to Moscow and then on to London. By then Moscow - London pax. had been taken by other carriers, and the disembarking pax had been flown down to Moscow from Leningrad, so there was no need to land at Moscow, hence the request to just continue to London. Denied.

The next Capt. to find Moscow below limits on arrival, said "stuff that" or words to that effect, and flew straight off to Helsinki. This caused an International Incident and BOAC were threatened with loss of their operating certifiicate because they had overflown the whole of the USSR without landing.

The BOAC Agent in Moscow was awakened early one morning and asked why "his" aircraft was off track over Siberia ( the only Nav. aids were not-very-good NDB's ). How do I know, he replied, it's not due in Moscow for another 4 hours. The point I'm making is that the Soviets were able to track the aircraft across the USSR, decide that it looked as if it was straying into a sensitive area - our track was always unnecessarily long to avoid "certain" areas of Siberia - identify it, locate the Moscow agent and wake him up at home, yet they were unable to provide the crew with actual weather reports for Moscow whilst enroute.

BA purchased a dedicated freighter ( 747 - 200 F ? memory failure ! ) but decided it wasn't economical, so sold it to Cathay Pacific, and then realised that they had done their sums using a full cabin crew complement, hotels, crew allowances etc. like a pax. a/c, so asked for it back. Get stuffed ( or words to that effect ) replied Cathay, so then BA had no dedicated freighter, and passed - or did - all their so-called BA Freight through Atlas Air out of Stansted. No idea what their present arrangement is, and don't care ( see my last remark)

Watch Libbie in full flight | Libbie Escolme Schmidt

Flew with Libbie, she has also written a book "Glamour in the Skies"

Does anyone have an idea of how much the pilots were paid during those days ?

I started as a Nav/P3 at GBP 600 per annum and retired when the Senior Captain First Class rate was 24K GBP. (don't ask me what my BA pension is today - I might tell you ! )

It was a great company to work for in those days and you felt proud to be part of it.

Used to be, now that they've kicked me out of a promised life time of Staff Rebate Travel in retirement due to my having passed my "Use By" date under retrospective conditions that they applied to the likes of me 5 years ago - rebate travel was always a "concession" not a contractual right, but it was promised - they can get stuffed, and they won't get a cent of my hard-earned pension when I now buy my tickets - on Emirates or the like. Tough. Sad, too, I owe a lot to BOAC (less to BA) for many reasons, but the way they have treated their long-retired over this issue is unacceptable, total lack of integrity, loyalty is a one-way street with the present BA / IAG management.