Certainly have retained a very strong impression of a stop at Frankfurt but I was only 7. It was definitely LHR-NBO probably September '71.

They flew to SIN as late as the early 90s.

Anilv

See my post 13, above.

Laurence

British Airways' 747-136s did serve SFO. I flew LHR-SFO on G-AWNI and SFO-LHR on G-AWNG, both in September, 1978 and both flights nonstop.

My memories on G-AWNF, LHR-FRA-ROM-BAH-BKK-HKG-SYD circa 1976, about 36 hours total trip time, my lasting memory is the cabin cleaning during transits, FRA was a back-pack vacuum cleaner with extension lead, ROM was a carpet sweeper, BAH was a straw broom,,,decreasing technology the further East you went.

LHR - MRU

Embarked on this service at LHR one morning on G-AWNF (I think around 1980 when I was with BAe athough it could have been earlier). We got as far as BAH where we were all off-loaded for reasons I can no longer remember. All the pax were put up in various hotels (I and others were in the Gulf Hotel) and 24 hours later the flight resumed. My memory is a little vague after all these years but is a diversion to BAH reasonable for a flight going to NBO or would we have been going LHR-BAH-MRU?

A more vivid memory of this flight is that whilst walking to the departure gate I met a very nice young Mauritian woman who needed help with her various bags. We contrived to sit next to each other when on board and arranged to meet up again in Mauritius. We met many times subsequently and are still in contact to this day and she named her son after me! (Her son but not mine!)

in about 1982 I flew on one LHR-MCT-KUL-SIN-SYD-MEL IIRC bloody thing kept stopping every five minutes.

Shortly before Christmas 1971 my family flew on what I believe was the first BOAC 747 flight from Melbourne (MEL, Tullamarine by then) to Hong Kong via a refuelling stop in Darwin.
After several days in Hong Kong, we flew (not by BOAC 747) to Bangkok, at which point our plans fell apart when India closed their airspace during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 which lasted from December 3rd to December 16. If anyone knows what exact date Indian airspace was actually closed (surely December 3rd?), that would nail our flight down to no more than about a week earlier.

We subsequently flew to the UK via Tehran and Beirut and returned to Australia with a few days each in Barbados, Mexico City and New Zealand, and numerous refuelling stops and transfers, in time for the start of school at the end of January 1972.

I was eight years old. Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tehran and Beirut were pretty exotic places back then!

For the original question (BOAC days), the first 747 route is well known, LHR-JFK, but the second is less so, JFK to Bermuda. The same aircraft could manage the whole lot within a 24-hour rotation, day after day.

After several other North American points the aircraft then got put onto Jo'burg via Nairobi, and then some Far East/Australia, both the latter via various combinations of Frankfurt and Rome, not for range reasons but just for traffic. This pretty much covered the 747 ops in BOAC times.

The California service has long been something of a fascination; as far as I am aware BOAC never ran the 747 there, and shortly after the BA merger the Air New Zealand DC-10 arrangement started. Both Pan Am and TWA did run nonstop to LAX/SFO with the -100, but it was regarded by BOAC as extreme on range, and they used operating techniques BOAC did not wish to follow. Certainly comments from ATC at the time about the summer midday departures westbound from Heathrow, especially if on easterlies off 10R (now 9R), showed a certain genuine concern given the known reliability issues with the JT9D. Once gone, a bit of humour returned, Pan Am sometimes being described as having been a "Hedge Clipper" or TWA as "Departing via the Piccadilly Line".

BOAC traditionally ran on from California, generally San Francisco via New York, through Honolulu to both Stydney and to Hong Kong via Tokyo, and both these generally carried more US than UK-originating pax, but these were progressively given up. British AW was a bit thin on capital expenditure at first, but the first 747-200B/Rolls Royce delivered late 1970s were immediately put onto LAX as their first run in lieu of most, but not all, of the Kiwi DC-10s, and then started a San Francisco flight as well, finally having their own aircraft with the range.

I was a bit surprised in about 1996 to get a BA 747-100 (in fact the pioneer AWNA), from Vancouver to LHR, which was my only -100 from the West Coast, but that's a bit shorter than California.

WHBM

That reminds me - there was a specific SID off 10R for those BA 747 Westbound departures going North in the summer. It initially followed the DVR routing towards DET before turning north to BPK, IIRC all at 4000' alt. I just can't remember its title.
I bet my mates HD and Talkdown Man over on ATC Issues will remember it.

My mate, Talkdown Man, has come to my rescue! It was a Polar Departure!

The route only started in Spring 1978, I was on one of the first (it had been running for just a week but was full), and it was allocated one of the initial 747-200/RRs, by that time there were half a dozen of them. Of course, there must have been days when the -100 would suit, whether it was winds, cargo load, or whatever.

The first 747 flight was LHR-JFK 14 April 1971.
There was a proving flight JFK-PIK-LHR the day before and I was lucky enough to get a ride down from PIK. on G-AWNE.

This was about 12 months after the first deliveries, the first three BOAC aircraft came in Spring 1970. There was a non-agreement with the pilots which led to them being unused for a considerable time. BOAC made a financial virtue of this by leasing out the JT9D-7A engines to other operators who were being plagued by the unreliability of the early units (in fact some of the engine issues never went away).

Yes my first trip on a 747 was actually on TWA in May 70.

Summer '75 74-136 passed through Tehran , several times a week en-rte Oz . We were laid off at the time time and working 'security' in Tehran.
In dispatch office we had a sweepstake on eng failure on dep . The person with divert ticket had hand on the 'fone ...... big sheet flame lights up the night .....
'' Bahrain , Tehran , the 011 is on the way . Another engine change ''. It was the time of ovalising fan cases on JT-9s.
Handled Qantas 74-100s. V hot start , engineer called catering ....'' Many bags of ice please '' .
Cowlings opened , every orifice stuffed with ice bags , cowls close . Eng start ...... taxied away leaving a trail of melt water , and smell of melting plastic .

rgds condor .