My one and only Viscount flight was with BAF, Manchester to Jersey (should have been Guernsey but that was fogbound). I proffered my PPL and asked the captain for the jump seat at MAN.

"We don't have one, but you can stand behind the copilot's seat if you like".

So I did. Takeoff to touchdown!

Came home on G-BMAP's jump seat (F27). How an aeroplane with half the number of Darts can be twice as noisy I don't know!

Oh yes! I remember good old BAF as a hostee. I was based at Southend airport for a few weeks and then back to Ghardaia in Algeria flying on Viscounts and Heralds. Lots of stories from 1980/1983. Does anyone remember The Rostemedes Hotel and the tin beds in Djanet??

Ah yes but the heralds were there first. Djanet "Hilton" room made of papyrus reeds, the alarm call being a goat eating your room. Awful at the time but looking back great fun.
BAF did some amazing charters.

I did my first ever line check out in Algeria flying Ghardaia to Algiers, at night, in a BAF Herald with ee-up Eddie Roocroft. He said he'd fly it oop there and I'd fly it back. So, after take off with the autopilot in Eddie headed south, not north. Then fell asleep. Aha.... he's testing me out to see if I'm assertive, I thought. So, I woke him up.
"What the bloody hell! Is there a problem lad?"
"No sir, but we're heading in the wrong direction."
"Then bloody sort it out and if you wake me up again before it's time to descend,
I'll bloody fail yer!"

I passed.

Eeee those were 't days.

Some names from the era...

Eddie Roocroft
Sam Ashkuri
Gil Pattinson
Dave Lonsdale
Harry Willis..... poster boy for string vests :-0
Caroline Frost
Frank Hargreaves
Roy Harding
Ray Scott
John Woodhouse
Bob Elwell

Trigger any memories?

I never did get down to Djanet but did lots of other places inc Libya and Egypt and way further beyond with BAF.

Good to see an old thread still lives!

Seems I'm the last guy around who actually took his own car on BAF Carvairs.

First time was in mid 1961 when I had flown in to Cologne from Ghana to collect a new Ford Taunus, which I then drove to England via Rotterdam - Southend by Carvair. Did that route again (out and back) in winter 1965 when I took my girlfriend skiing in Austria.

Flew Silver City long nose Freighters several times Lydd - Le Touquet when on leaves in 1963 and 1964. Yes, the windows leaked, but it still remains the fastest ever way of crossing the Channel with a car at 20 minutes. Later I did it many times by hovercraft, but their best time ever that I experienced was 25 minutes.

Funny how now it seems curiously dated but at the time was perfectly rational and very cool.

For those interested in the routing you had to fly back then my 1961 flight to Cologne was Accra - Barcelona BOAC Britannia, Barcelona - Zurich Swissair DC7 (en route from South America), Zurich - Cologne Swissair Convair 440 - you got variety in those days!

The 1961 flight has always stuck with me for a mystery side story: I was working for Shell in Ghana and when I went on leave the local General Manager gave me an ordinary hand addressed letter with a British stamp to Shell Centre in London to post when I got to England. I pointed out it would be two or three days before I got there but he said no matter, but it can't go in the Ghana post. So the first thing I did on driving out of Southend Airport was to stop at the first red post box and post the letter. To this day I have no idea what it was about.

And now she rests in peace, hopefully for ever, at the Berkshire Museum of Aviation at Woodley, near her birthplace. I worked on her as an HP apprentice in the early 60s and can still hear the miaow of her Darts when wound up and smell the kerosene. She looked very smart in her BEA livery, as she is now. Good memories!

My granddad knew Mike Keegan quite well I think. He set up Datapost and used BAF. Prior to Parcelforce, what routes/aircraft did BAF operate for Royal Mail?

Ref post #17......

Way back when in MCT, I recall the Paulings Carvair getting airborne (OK a contradiction in terms) one summers day. The aircraft used to fly up and down the coast for some very considerable time to gain height before setting course overhead. On one occasion, I completely forgot the Carvair. All sorts of traffic in and out for some 15-20 mins, then the Carvair reported setting course overhead! Not my proudest moment and one re-lived many times in the safety and human factor courses I deliver.

Also remember the Bristol Frighteners at SOU.They always seemed to perform very steep turns onto 20 final.

Yes when I was detached from Glasgow to Sumburgh I did the same in the BEA VIscount. Crossing Scapa Flow at 500ft trying to spot sunken ships was most exhilerating!

fat'n'grey,
I didn't know that the Bristol Freighters operated out of Southampton.
I remember them at Hurn in the early '60s, Silver City and then British United.

dixi188

The Bristol Freighters most certainly did operate out of what was originally Southampton/Eastleigh. My parents house was about 1.5 miles from touchdown on the then runway 21, remember them thundering overhead.

They moved out in the early 1960s after flight cancellations caused by waterlogging of the grass runway.

Their stay at BOH was only temporary, moving back to SOU, together with the other airlines who moved out, within weeks of the opening of the new concrete runway, I believe in 1965.

Southampton/Eastleigh
 

Took the Cortina on a Bristol Freighter in July '67 to Cherbourg.

There is a Flickr page by Barry Friend with some excellent photos from Southampton taken in the 1960's taken shortly after the paved runway was completed with Bristol freighters along with Heralds, Viscounts, etc.

Go to Flickr and do a search there good pictures as Flickr is an excellent site to look for pictures you dream of but never expected them to be there, my eyes have watered so much from some of the rare and unique photos posted on Flickr.

Your fault for buying a Cortina!

I think in 1967 the Ford Cortina was the must have car so no fault of his own to have owned one plus he actually got to take it on a Bristol Freighter from Southampton to Cherbourg:-)

I have flown on a British Air Ferry Viscount ; g-apey. Ive actually flown on it twice- once in the early 1970s and again 20 years back. It was just going out of passenger use onto freighter.
I love the look & the sound of the Viscount with its Rolls-Royce Dart quartet singing & whistling.

elefunt
 

Hello Hostee,
Here are a couple of photos from inside those straw huts at Djanet between 1981 and 83. Another photo shows Linda and Rosemary en route to an oasis near to Ghardaia. Rosemary drank the sediment left overs from our President wine before leaving. Another photo shows the Viscount in Air Algerie colours. We used to stop at Tamanrasset. One night at about 3am, in the hotel, appeared at my bedroom door to stay the night with me because the waiters were using their master keys to enter the girls` rooms. It amused me to think that she felt safe in my room. And of course she was! Happy memories, Brian Edwards

BAF Belfast
 

BAF memories
First ever flight Belfast-Isle-of-Man Viscount
Then a few BFS-JER summer hols
Fast forward 10 years and I'm a despatcher at BFS handling the nightly BAF Viscount bringing 7 tons of The Sun newspaper to Belfast. We'd offload that and then load 7 tons of live eels for Amsterdam.
Daytime work in the summer was the Jersey flights. Standing on the sunny ramp hearing the whistling Darts rushing up the taxiway and then park for a quick turnround.
I did get a ride on one when going to a friends wedding - empty positioning BFS-SOU. We were very high for a Viscount, maybe over 30,000 ft. Then standing for the SOU landing. Wonderful.

My first ever flight on a Viscount was not a BAF one, I think it belonged to North East and was G-AOYL from London Heathrow to Leeds Bradford in Feb 1975.

My one and only experience of a BAF Herald. I was expecting a Gulf Air F27 from Bahrain to Dhahran. I got into this thing and realised it was not a F27 and the charming stewardess told me it was a Handley Page Herald and had just arrived from England and was on a wet lease.

Looking on-line, the service ceiling for the 800 series seems to have been FL270, though personally I don't recall hearing Viscounts going above about FL190 in their latter years. The Manx IOM-LHR service was one that used to venture up to those lofty heights, if my memory is correct.