Trek Airways Viking at Schiphol
 

As Schiphol airport was opened on 19th September 1916, a local archive thought it fitting to display a few photos showing its history. The display included this photo of what appears to be a Trek Airways Vickers Viking at Schiphol Airport.
http://www.vc10.net/div/IMG_8904_resize.jpg
Photo credit: Stadsarchief Amsterdam

It must have been quite a trek to fly this airliner all the way from Amsterdam to South Africa. Any ideas how long this lasted as I'm sure that the Vikings were quickly superseded by other, more modern types?

Just taken a look at the history of TREK Airways. They commenced operations in 1953 and continued Viking operations until 1958, replacing them with DC4s. They operated three Vikings ZS-DKH, -DKI & -DOU. Some parts of -DKH have survived and they are in the SAA museum.

They were the only airline who operated Vikings from SA to Europe but Vikings were well known on the "Africa run". Central African flew from Salisbury, then Southern Rhodesia. Airwork and Hunting Clan Air Transport flew from Nairobi.

Not too sure how long the flight would have taken to SA. Airwork took two and a half days on the Blackbushe to Nairobi route, that included two night stops, normally Malta and Khartoum. I guess TREK would need another night stop and take a total of four days to reach Johannesburg.


http://www.timetableimages.com/ttima...b/tre50sb1.jpg

In 1948 I travelled in a Hunting Viking from Blackbushe (I think) to Salisbury with overnights at Malta, Wadi Halfa (should have been Khartoum but for a sandstorm) and Nairobi plus fuel stops at Nice, El Adem, Khartoum & Ndola.

Its along time ago now but as I remember seeing both fly for BEA I wondered how the Viking and DC3/Dakota compared against one another.

Any one got views
PB

Apparently the Viking had one advantage, depending on your point of view. :O

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shri...YjEyYTJiYg.jpg

The Brian Trubshaw autob has a super picture of a Royal Flight Viking at Ysterplaat with Table Mountain in the background, dated 1947

I am a child of the jet age (b1965) so assume that until the Comet turned up, most air journeys were quite a trek

I pick up and read Ernest K. Gann Fate is the Hunter every now and then to remind me how lucky we are to travel by air these days. A380 v Viking to JNB? A380 thank you.

I remember a very senior captain telling me of his time RHS in Vikings.They carried a DJ in their kit as, on overnight stops, they were expected to dance with the ladies.

I've posted this before on another forum but the quote fits here as well:
From 'Britain's Airlines volume 2': "The Viking was significantly faster than the Dakota although it had slightly higher operating costs and needed longer runways. When the German charter airlines began taking to the sky in the mid-50s, over twenty Vikings were used, their higher speed proving a real benefit on the longer sectors to Spain and the Balearics."
So even though the wing design on both types dated back to 1932 or thereabouts Vickers did manage to improve a bit on the DC-3 design. On the other hand having the main spar run through the fuselage, however interesting the views it provided for the passengers nearby, messed up its prospects as a cargo carrier. And then of course you've got the simple problem of having loads and loads of C-47s available at very reasonable prices against a new, and suitably priced, Viking. The production numbers clearly show what happened next: VC-1: 163, DC-3: 16079.

Trek ran low-cost services between Johannesburg and Luxembourg. They couldn't get licences into any decent destination in Europe because the mainstream carriers would lobby against this, but Luxembourg had no home carrier to Africa. The same approach applied to Loftleidir coming from the USA. My guess would be that they were at Amsterdam for maintenance, this not being so readily available in Luxembourg.

It took the Viking (which is essentially a WW2 Wellington with a new fuselage, and thus familiar to many crews and engineers in the 1940s-50s) four days, with leisurely overnight stops in hotels, even with opportunities for sightseeing, and the same crew throughout. Services were typically weekly, needing two aircraft. Trek had three Vikings from 1955-59, even much later in their 707 and then 747SP days they did little else. The Vikings were picked up from UK independents, and later sold on to African residual operators. Here's the route

http://www.timetableimages.com/ttima...b/tre50sb1.jpg

Wasn't the only long haul Viking route to Africa at the time. Central African Airways did Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) to London, while UK independents Hunting-Clan and Airwork both did similar operations from London (typically Blackbush) across Africa. Most of these were also once-weekly operations, and despite the hotel and stop costs, and low passenger numbers, were significantly cheaper (less than half) what BOAC charged.

Any mention of Vikings and Trek must include the very recently deceased Robin Anderson.

In his early days he flew SAAF F-86's in Korea.

www.trekairways.co.za/Landing_by_the_numbers_by_Robin_Anderson.pdf

If you click on this SAAFA link SAAF Association The Johannesburg newsletter 'Skyline' has his obit.