BOAC_BA Long haul long tours

[Peter47]

Very interesting thread and I'm currently looking at BOAC's 1971 timetable which helps it all make sense - here is the link again.

Index of /ttimages/ba2/ba71

Looking at crewmeal's rosters and Ian Burgess-Barber's post (#11), could someone tell me how much deadheading there was at the time as a proportion of hours flown? I would imagine that not much would be required to & from the USA & Canada but rather more on the Far East & Africa routes looking at the complexity of the schedules. Do you know how it would compare with other long haul carriers? Were crew paid for deadhead sectors the same way as for active sectors or was remuneration based on hours away from base?

[crewmeal]

could someone tell me how much deadheading there was at the time as a proportion of hours flown?

It all depended on the trip and the route. Where there was no direct BOAC service for example HKG - SIN crews would sometimes deadhead on CX. I did it a couple of times. As previously described there were trips where you would deadhead out and back to the Far East to cover for a 'National Girl' As the Days Overseas Allowances (DOA's) were based on meals at the hotel you would loose out because you will have had meals on the aircraft. The advantage there was duty free shopping.

[Flightwatch]

In 1980 BA were still doing a weekly 747 operation Hong Kong to Johannesburg, as Cathay hadn't got into long haul ops by then. How was that crewed ? A triangle LHR-HKG-JNB-LHR ?

I flew the 747C for BA in the mid to late 80s and the above flight was still being operated, twice a week as I remember. The full routing was LHR-ANC-NRT-HKG-CMB-SEZ-JNB and vv. It was flown by a 741 and held the record as the longest air route in the world at that time.

The crews were rostered for parts of the trip, to/from NRT was part of the daily operation there and the NRT-HKG sectors were flown by crews that had arrived or departed from/for LHR Similarly the sectors between HKG and CMB were flown as part of a triangular trip and so too was the CMB-SEZ-JNB. The latter was not much sought after as it was a 2 sector night flight with the "interesting" round the bay visual circling approach at SEZ in the monsoon at certain times of the year.