Aer Lingus BAC 1-11s
 

Is there any history of any of these four aircraft going out on lease to other companies during their service with Aer Lingus ? I know many of the Boeings spent time with other operators like Nigerian and Transair but I don't know about the
1-11s.

Thankyou.

RZ Jets seems to show they were never leased out to anybody else... I also checked just one 737 which showed lease details.

Odd, opened my elderly copy of Airliner Production List - a whole sequence of BAC 1-11s (c/n 43 - 62 which included the Irish quartet), are missing from the list, looks like a printer's error when typesetting or however they did the printing 30 years ago. Never noticed before!

Only one: EI-ANF was leased to Lanica as AN-BBS 29 October 1966 to 27 April 1967 with LANICA titles on the Aer Lingus colour scheme. It retained the Aer Lingus name Maolmhaoghóg (St Malachy) which some interpreted as a Nicaraguan deity!.

They were also notable that the whole quartet stayed together at Aer Lingus from mid 1965 to early 1991, when they were retired. That's a very long service time and most unusual, they were never added to or sold off. I guess EI must have been quite satisfied with them.

They even got all sold to an operator in Nigeria and ran on there together to their various final ends.

That initial LANICA lease bridged until they got their own new aircraft delivered, and was likely organised by BAC themselves. It was the first One-Eleven to operate in Central America, where the type subsequently was sold, small numbers only, to many of the operators there, who seemed to maintain some common contacts and leasing the aircraft among themselves. Several later moved on to the larger -500 series, and apparently the BAC North American sales office (headed by one of their ex-test pilots) moved down from New York to Miami. Unlike the smaller aircraft, which had a very successful initial sale to US operators of the 1960s, in quite some quantity, the -500 model was never even offered for certification by the FAA.

Thanks everyone. So apart from a Central American blip in 1966 Aer Lingus operated the quartet for twenty six years. Quite an achievement.

I know British Airways leased one of the 747s for a spell, Nigerian had a 707 and Hispania, Transair and Britannia Airways all borrowed 737-200s from time to time. Some of the 733s ended up with Futura as well. Correct me if I'm wrong but the last lease Aer Lingus did was a few A320s to Virgin Little Red.

An Aer Llingus Boeing 747 went to East African Airways on lease for a while.
Registration Aircraft c/n Previous Acquired Disposal Remarks
EI-ASJ Boeing 747-148 19745- 1974 1976 Leased from Aer Lingus. 12/74 to 2/75 and 12/75 to 26/3/76

I liked the 1-11. The first one I saw was an Aer Lingus machine at Leeds Bradford in 1976. I was expecting a 737 but the 1-11 turned up sporting the new King and Weatherell livery so I was doubly confused. To me, the 'Dublin jet' was a white 737 with green stripes and a leaf on the tailfin !

Oops, missed the reference to AN-BBS! :O

Flew on several of Dan-Air's 1-11s, always liked it. Can still hear the various 1-11s at Gatwick starting up, that slow rising howl!

A few reminders:

Not a bad-looking aeroplane really. Lingus certainly got their money's worth.

Mooncrest - yes, if I remember rightly, Aer Lingus did perhaps 3-4 weekly LBA-DUB services back in the late 70's. 732's were used during the working week, but I always used to look forward to the Sunday schedule which was a 1-11.

The 737s and 747s were marketable commodities and that leasing business indirectly gave rise to the formation of Guinness Peat. The One-Eleven 200s didn't really have the same worldwide lease appeal. As said though, incredible servants for Aer Lingus really.

EI-ASJ at Nairobi while with EAA. Is that container meant to be at that angle?

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c8c6bd1770.jpg

Certainly true there wasn't much slack time for an Aer Lingus aeroplane. If it wasn't carting passengers or cargo about for its masters it was working for somebody else, as we've seen more recently with the Little Red A320 lease.

Did their 707s do much transatlantic work after the 747s had arrived or did they do like JAT did with theirs, i.e. charters and back-up flights ?

There was schedule work for one, maybe two in high summer, 707s after the 747s came, but there was a lot of spare capacity. Aer LIngus ran a surprising number of 707 charters originating from the UK to the USA during the 1968-78 charter boom, before ABC flights consolidated things, there must have been some licence condition that permitted them to share this traffic.

The 747 always seemed far too large for Aer Lingus at the time, certainly for 8 months of the year, and it's surprising they never downsized from them.

The One-Elevens were bought for, and for quite some years monopolised, not the trunk route from Dublin to London but the low frequency continental services, many of which stopped in Manchester to pick up additional business. Some of these only ran a couple of times a week, while in their early years the Heathrow route continued with high-frequency Viscounts. They only bought two 737s in the late 1960s to begin with, and so the Viscounts continued to supplement them for some time until more trickled in, often just one at a time. In fact throughout their time in the fleet the One-Elevens were unusual in Heathrow.

There was one exception, from the start the early evening Dublin-Liverpool flight generally seemed to be a One-Eleven, after a day flying to Europe and back. As a teenager it came overhead our house in The Wirral, making that distinctive One-Eleven Descending aerodynamic noise, and I would look up from my school homework to see it pass. Fast forward through decades of life, and at the start of the 1990s when making business trips to Dublin, with colleagues who were probably not even born when I was initially watching, there were the same One-Elevens, with the same operator, setting off from the same base. Only the paint colours had been switched round a bit.

I beg to differ. Although they bought 7 of the very earliest Fokker F.27s in 1958-9, they sold them all off just seven years later, a number to New Zealand, and replaced them with secondhand, and in fact older, Vickers Viscounts from KLM, to give a standardised short haul Viscount propeller fleet. In fact, they were some of the earliest secondhand F.27s on the market.

Once the 747s arrived the 707s were often leased out also - Zambia, BCAL, Qantas, Bangladesh Biman, Arkia and Libyan being ones that I can remember. Aer Lingus flew 707s on some IT charters in Europe also, generally on longer routes such as Rhodes, Heraklion and the Canaries but also Palma, for example. In the latter years only one machine (EI-ASO) remained and it was used almost exclusively on charter services during the summer. In winter it was used for the odd ad hoc service or leased out (as it was to Arkia in 1984/5).

Aer Lingus exercised Fifth Freedom rights from Dublin to Copenhagen among other European destinations and used Manchester as the UK stopping point. This is why the 1-11s were daily visitors at Manchester and why Manchester saw Aer Lingus jets before Heathrow. WHBM, have I got that right ?

I remember once watching a EIN 1-11 starting engines at LBA and seeing a streak of orange flame flying out of the port engine. It looked spectacular but I guess nothing too serious.

1966 EI One-Eleven departures from Dublin on a Saturday in 1966 when they were fully into service. All overnighted at Dublin.

0850 Paris
0925 Manchester-Amsterdam
1025 Manchester-Copenhagen
1130 Barcelona
1505 Dusseldorf
1845 Paris

So, nothing until 0850, one of the 4 aircraft doesn't even start until 1130, and only two of the four make it back to do second afternoon rotations. And Saturday was the busiest day of the week, less departures on other days. Incidentally, there were several flights a week to Lourdes in southern France (not on Saturday), a couple of which continued to Rome, bringing together several key ecclesiastical points that no other carrier connected.

Simpler days !