Which airline was "HS" operating DC 8 50s?
And which was "WL" also operating a DC 8 from Istanbul?

WL might have been Bursa.

HB

Yes it was, Bursa Hava Yollari to give them their full name, weekly on Mondays summer 1980, Heres a rather poor quality picture of TC-JBV on 12/5/80:-

]https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c48739df10.jpg

airliners.net have decent pictures of their other aircraft TC-JBY and TC-JBZ:-
https://www.airliners.net/search?air...display=detail

HS was Aeral who leased Overseas National DC-8 N9110V and also only operated summer 1980 on Italian routes.

Bursa TC-JBV was an old Air Spain -21
Isla de Menorca EC-CDA

N9110V was HB-IDU ex Balair and operated in their colours but with Aeral titles.
a -55F series

As for when those 02.00 departures finally ended ?
At Monarch out of Gatwick we still had a Monday night B757 to Corfu at 0140 (Club 18-30 types) in Summer 1986
It was often late because by now it was the aircrafts 4th rotation of the day - albeit the departure was now into Tuesday morning.
The hot meal/snack I recall was a cheeseburger yuk!

I happened to notice some 0100 departures this summer out of MAN - they still go on in a few places it seems

I see the 1985 mayfly has KG Orion BX Spantax and KT British Airtours (who have 2 Palma dep's well after 0000 73A and a L-1011 both operating a W)

Small-hours departures:

Sometimes they were the result of route licensing restrictions. In about the mid-80s, Britannia managed to get route licences to both Malta and Cyprus, after endless objections by their home-based airlines. This was long before the current era of unrestricted routes for EU airlines.

One of the licenses - I think it was Malta - included a condition that departure from the UK had to be within some deeply unfriendly time bracket, something like 0001 to 0400. This was, of course, an attempt to protect the traffic of the home airline.

There were other reasons, too. For example, Corfu at that time was limited to daylight ops only, so there were occasionally Britannia rotations that were timed to get there at first light. That meant leaving LTN at something like 0100. Lovely. Around the end of the 80s there was a slight improvement to the approach lights at Corfu, and night ops were deemed to be acceptable. So the silly times departures ended, but night arrivals at CFU could be less than a barrel of fun, especially when CBs were banging around the place.

They may have been quiet days but look how many Britannia flights were going in/out across the day - far more than the paltry TUI flights today

BY's sizable flying program from LTN ended in 1993 with the withdrawal of the hard-working and flexible 737-200 fleet. Aspects of the program such as the MOD flights to Germany were never going to continue on the 757/767
so of course these ceased and the base reduced to 2 x 757's as flying from other airports increased.

Some brilliant old pics which have just surfaced from the collection of Vernon Murphy....

Some great pictures there boeing_eng, thanks for posting them. Cyprus leased the Aer Turas Brit EI-BBH from Sep 1976 until April 1978. It operated each Wednesday from Larnaca as the CY1048, carrying mostly fruit and veg, departing back to Larnaca via Basle on Thursday morning as the CY1049. It was replaced by CL-44 G-AWGT (later 5B-DAN) leased from Tradewinds which operated the same flight but from Gatwick.
Ambassador G-ALZZ was leased to Skyways Coach Air during 1968, operating from Manston as the runway at Lympne/Ashford was too short. During and after the lease it lost the white line below the window cheatline - something I had forgotten until seeing the above picture. Not sure how much flying it did when it returned from lease, but it was scrapped around June 1969. Autair's other Ambassadors had already gone by 1969 - G-ALZS was written off after a landing accident at Luton on 14/9/67 while G-ALZV, reported as withdrawn from use on 28/1/68, was scrapped around June 1968.

In '69/70/71 I lived on the Luton departure route to the Med and I worked shifts at London ATCC as an Air Traffic Control Assistant.
When at home, (just west of Bovingdon) we were often woken any time between 1 am and 5 am by Luton departures.
When at work, I would finish a 'first half' night shift at 3 am (starting at 8pm) with a Luton departure awaiting its slot time and get home just before 4 am in time to look east and see it climbing out of Luton.

A few more from the same collection......Some very well looked after slides!

The early morning departures use to keep me awake too, and that's when I was at work!

Thanks again boeing_eng, exceptional quality for photos dating as far back as the late 60's. I remember the Autair Vikings (only just !) from 1967. Both were parked up on 1/10/67 and were officially reported "withdrawn from use" but continued to fly occasional freight charters until both were ferried to Soesterborg on 15/2/68.
The Eagle Brit G-AOVK arrived for storage early 1969 and languished until Feb 1970 when it was broken up.

Had the same problem.... I remember Monarch operating 1-11's to Santiago in the early hours on behalf of the Association of Spanish Workers. We used to call them the Association of Spanish Insomniacs!

I expect three return trips per day was normal on the 'holiday jets' back then, not only on Monarch but Orion, Britannia et al. If longer trips like the Canaries or Greece were thrown in, maybe only two per day.

rotations
 

Back in the developing jet package holiday years-
Court Line and Autair managed 4 rotations a day - (remember all those 02.00 1-11 departures!)
sectors back then were much shorter - so say a Palma Alicante Rimini or Venice then a Palma was possible in a day

Even at MON/OM in 1986 when I was at LGW we had 4 rotation on a Saturday and a Monday with the 757 (with an 01.40 CFU departure)

the longer IT sectors such as TCI NCO and RHO from LGW were the domain of BEA airtours comets and 707's BUA VC-10's
and Dan Air comets, and the Monarch 720B's from LTN
Prior to the jets the Britannia was king on these routes

When I worked for Court Line in 1970, the one-elevens operated up to 4 rotations a day, with 4 "waves" - 0800, 1400, 2000, 0200. It was manic turning round up to 7 aircraft within about two hours - I seem to remember the record was 29 minutes!

That is exactly how I remember it too!
I was with VistaJet looking after Air Spain's movements - we also had 02.00 DC-8 departures - oh the joy!

Lets not forget the Air Bridge Merchantmans heading out of LTN around 0100-0200 on the Higgs paperboy runs !!