UK Charter Airlines - how did crewing for the regional airports work ?
 

In the days when the 737-200 was THE holiday jet (although not the only one, I concede), airlines such as Britannia, Air Europe, Monarch, Orion, Dan-Air, British Airtours and Air UK Leisure operated from their main bases as well as smaller regionals like Aberdeen and Leeds Bradford. Being part of 'W' patterns, how did the airlines sort out pilots and cabin crew for the regional departures ? I think I'm right in saying that most of Britannia's crews for the regionals were from Luton, meaning their aircraft had to return there on its fourth leg. With Monarch also being Luton-based, did they do likewise or utilise their Manchester base for this purpose ? Also, did the crews get flown from base to regional or put in taxis or company transport ? Hotels when away from base or rented accommodation ? Lots of potential expense (recovered likely from holiday supplements).

Thankyou.

Britannia and Orion used to fly crews up to Teesside in Cessna twins G-BRIT for one.

From my time with Monarch which was back in the mid eighties:
1. W patterns. OR
2. A small contingent of locally based Flight Deck crew whose numbers were increased in High Season either by LTN crews being put up in a hotel for a few days, or by crews from LTN doing temporary basings for a few months.
In my case I did one GLA and two LGW temporary basings.

Thankyou both. Daft of me not to remember that Britannia and Orion both had Cessna twins for crew transport. Probably not as useful an option when Britannia obtained a Mooney to replace the 421.

Britannia used to have something known as a "long haul check " which entailed brakes / wheels all having plenty of meat on them for " xx " days / flights away from a base, also sufficient oil in the hold so the aircraft could be operated without engineering support...until something requiring engineers arose that is. That, and certain taxi firms did very well carrying crews around the UK.

Air Europe used chartered KingAirs, Chieftains and also Hallmark minibuses.

In some cases it had to do with the duty day. You could leave Manchester for example, coach toTeeside, and still have enough duty hours to go to southern Spain.



So the aeroplane left Manchester early for rotation to Spain and the W destination, landing there around mid day. You left Manchester by coach with a crew mid morning and arrived at the W, to pick up the aeroplane and fly the second rotation. This gave 2 to 3 hours coach, and 8 hours to Spain and back, or an 11 hour duty day with 2 sectors. No problemo.



The coach at the W would then take the early crew back to base.

But if the W was a Canary or Cyprus, then it would be a position to the W the night before. Usually the coach stayed at the W, and when the inbound crew landed the next afternoon, it would take them back to Manchester. A long duty day for them, but it was after flying and was usually compensated for by an increase in the required rest period. This also happened if the UK part of the W was over 4 hours from your base.

There was to my recollection very little positioning by air after the crash in Glasgow, and in later years when we had to start and compete with the low cost carriers. There was also the problem when the work horse became the 757 (and 767 long haul W patterns) since there was a crew of at least 7 and some times 9 or 10. Air taxi seats and payloads were pushed with 8 crew, their flight bags, and suitcases. Anyone who has travelled with a female cabin crew to a night stop will remember what that could weigh!!

Even positioning by schedule airline was significantly more expensive than a coach when crews of that number were involved.

Sometime in the mid-80s, on a thoroughly foul winter afternoon, I was joined on a train ex-Kings Cross by a Britannia crew who spent the first bit of the journey amending their Jepps. They left at NCL.

Thankyou all. I expect being a taxi driver with airport/airline contacts was quite lucrative at one time. The idea of the Hallmark coaches sounds familiar too. Do TUI have their own fleet of crew vehicles and drivers ? I've often seen smart but unmarked Mercedes cars and people carriers at LBA when they've had flights passing through.

You are right that in the 80s the majority of Britannia pilots were at LTN, with some at MAN, BHX and LGW. There were also cabin crew at NCL and GLA. At one time, there were so many flights out of NCL that Hallmark ran a daily coach, usually with 20+ crew members on board, to the crew hotel there. Positioning to GLA was usually by air, either BA from LHR or BMA from EMA. Accommodation away from base was in hotels. Travel to airports within a sensible distance was by taxi or coach, as described by a previous poster.
Most of that ended when there was a major policy change around 1990, putting crews where the flying was, with the intention of eliminating much crew travel and hotac. The claim (!!) from the tour operators was that they could give 3 years notice of changing base requirements. Yes, sure. Of course that never happened. The rebasing caused huge turbulence and much resentment, for reasons I won't bore you with. But.... the MD was an accountant, and he got his cost savings, allegedly.

Thankyou ken. Considering the number of airports Britannia used (lots) compared to the number of crew bases they had (few), their hotel and transport bills must have been significant, to say the least. I suppose in the case of Orion, sending crews to Leeds Bradford from East Midlands was relatively cheap, provided the crews weren't operating four sector duties and didn't have to be changed in the first place.

Quite a lot of the early days Orion W patterns into LBA were crewed from LGW. There would be a Hallmark VW Caravelle people mover sitting outside the airport to meet the aircraft.

BIA used the British Midland DC9/ATP Saturday schedule on LBA-LHR to move crews for the Arrowsmith LBA-PMI BAC1-11 which was a W pattern from LGW. They had Island Elf but it was rarely used to support this operation.

Some other airlines used train services - the days of legend often saw one of the crew providing on-train catering for their colleagues positioning for duty. The return trip post-duty was often accompanied by suitable quantities of "bus juice" - probably best left to history to explain.

The logistics of this must have been horrendous by today's low-cost airline standards.

Hallmark and British Rail must have made a fortune.

Mooncrest:

The direct costs of travel and hotac were considerable, but there was also the indirect cost of using duty days to travel instead of flying on revenue services. I don't have figures, but I suspect the last point may have been the biggest cost. The objective of the revised crew basing plan in the 90s was to eliminate all those costs and wasted duties - to a large extent it did. Part of the intention was also to end W-pattern trips, but that was not wholly achieved, not least because the spread of business over the country was in a constant state of flux. And still is, even without Covid.

An Air Europe B757 Crew from Gatwick to Cardiff.



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Air Europe doing it in style. Is the aircraft a Beech Queen Air ?

Beechcraft 65-B80 Queen Air G-BSSL owned by Parker and Heard Ltd

Parker & Heard had several Queenairs based at Biggin, usually parked on Express Aviation's western ramp, wondered what they used them for! Loved the sound those old bombers made taking off...

In the early 1980s I recall Orion crews used to stay at the Britannia Hotel in central Manchester, so even if they had a crew base there they seemed to have itinerant ones as well. My office window over the street overlooked the entrance, from where I would very regularly see them leaving in uniform for the airport - in a black cab. Two pilots on the tip-up seats, three FAs on the back seat. Pretty economical way to travel (don't know about the hotac expense).

A 1980s VW minibus doesn't sound the best way to travel from LBA to Gatwick at the end of a duty. Or were they being taken to Leeds station ?

In the early 80's Orion, Britannia and Air Europe all had a crew base at MAN. Might well have had additional crew from other bases over the summer.

No MAN base for Orion crew early eighties, I would have jumped at one! All based EMA until later in the eighties, when a LGW base opened.

As a young ramp rat I took a keen interest in the cabin crew, and was sure cabin crew were MAN based - it was one of them that got me my job!

They didn't get much time to see the place but I'd love to know what the crews from the bigger, busier airports made of Leeds Bradford from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. It is far from brilliant now (new terminal needed) but back in the day it was small and basic with no Duty Free shop and a rather short runway! Still, fair play to Britannia for proving 737 ops were possible and for kick-starting the process.

LBA was always, shall we say, interesting, and sometimes too exciting. There was almost always a crosswind, and often enough turbulence to shake your boots off. No duty free? Of no interest to crews, we were not entitled.
The runway in its short guise was often so limiting on RTOW that we would stage through LTN to uplift enough fuel to go further than, say, Palma. Though I do remember one day when everything fell the right way (strong wind down the runway at LBA, strong tailwind for most of the distance) when I managed to go direct to Monastir with a full load in a B737-200.
One of the less endearing attributes of RW32 was the undulations. If you floated past the proper touchdown point, you would float a long way because of the humps and dips; not a nice thing to do.

RW32/14 was extended 36 years ago. The newer part is flat although close enough to The Chevin for that to be an operational hindrance. The original part is as undulating as ever and has had umpteen repairs. Even driving a tug on the runway is uncomfortable.

I didn't expect aircrew to have access to duty free. I simply mentioned it to illustrate the lack of facilities at LBA during its formative years.

I seem to remember Leeds was very similar to Bristol with the same problems when landing a B737-200.

I would have thought an airport with no duty free would be more attractive to the charter cabin crews, it would increase their chances of sales on the aircraft.

It would certainly have been a benefit for ground handling staff - many a time we had to send people to scour duty free for missing pax so we could make an on-time departure ("No need to rush Mabel, they won't go without us....") :ugh:

I too have wondered how operators crewed where they had a series one summer, then a different operator took it the next year. Doing so at some of the secondary UK points seemed difficult enough, eg Court Line operating out of Bristol for just one or two years, but Berlin must have been a considerable challenge, and yet a series of operators moved in and out of there - Dan-Air, Laker, Channel, Monarch, and others.

I suspect pilots stuck with the airline, but did local cabin crew move around between them as contracts were gained and lost ?

I joined AE at the start, Feb 1979 because they asserted that they intended to operate only three 737's, forever, and work only for Intasun, forever and be based at Gatters, forever. One year later, I was in the back of a cab heading for Cardiff on the start of a "W" pattern that took me away from home for six days.

Years later, long haul, crewing through Bangor, Maine, seven days hotac'd up at the Holiday Inn and going up & down East -coast America was normal. I suggested we open a transit Base at Bangor & make me Base Captain where I would live , forever. Chief Pilot used to fall about laughing every time he saw me.

Brakedwell : Got me welling up again ! Blimey, those AE crews look damn young.

We all were then, weren't we Gordon?

Luckily we in Britannia only used B767s for Florida or places like Cancun trips so I never had to tech stop so never had the pleasure of meeting Gordomac in Bangor.

Noticed the Queenair commander has placed the attractive young hostess in the co-pilot seat, for weight and balance purposes!

Not quite right, the rest of us were too scared to sit in that seat!

I actually thought that was an FO !

Mooncrest ; See what you've started ? Us ole codgers creeping the thread , a bit, but it's still nostalgic.
Gypo ; Shame. You would have found me playing drums at Dick Stacey's in Brewer and I would have been delighted to buy you a cold one.
On thread though Mooncrest, you will have got your answer. It was a crewing nightmare and most operators seemed to settle for a combination of "w" patterns with local Bases too. Mostly, it seemed to be local CC rather than a full-on Base. Managers didn't favour seperate Bases because they felt it gave them lack of control.

In my really early days as an Ops Duty Officer for BIA we had bases at LGW, Blackpool, and Channel Islands. It all got really mixed up in the fog season. A real crewing nightmare.

In my latter days, "Based" in Bahrain but operating Bahrain-CDG-Manch. Min-rest in the Excelsior Hotel at Manch airport & then in the back of a coach for heaven's sake to LHR next day. Looked out of the window as we coached down the M6 I mused " cripes, joined GF to get away from all this ".

Anytime Gordo.

Might as well join in the memory trail ..
Feb '69 was the 1st time I'd ever met an airline crew . Me , 16 going across and up , across and up ...
Norfolk to Aberdovey to the Outward Bound Sea School by British Rail . BCAL crew in uniform across the aisle ; alighting in Coventry or BHX . Cannot remember which !
20 years on , me sneaking home by rail from BHX after an FDP , uniform well disguised .
Hallmark transport rings a pleasant bell . No competition was crew transport from LTN to 'The Noke' by the M1 . Leyland trannie van rusting and rattling down M1 . Same age as the 25yrs old Tristars we were flying , and 25yr old Court Line Bedford TK steps at LTN .
When we got to Carribbean , via Santa Maria or Holiday Inn Bangor ! Crew trans.. could be a Bandit for the 15 of us .... But the c/c baggage would have to go ahead in a Twin Cessna [ 404 , 414 ] . 'Tho one memorable roster change was even older than the LTN ones . A 30 yr old Learjet for the 3 flight deck .. Greneda , St Juan , Orlando [ Sanford ] .. did not quite compensate for 4 days on the beach 'tho .

Sky gypsies indeed we were .

rgds condor .

SkyService, the Canadian charter outfit, had several years of basing A320s in the UK to operate Airtours summer flights. Leeds Bradford and Teesside were two such bases. The cabin crew were recruited and based locally but the pilots came over from Canada on, I think, three month stints. I believe they were put up in rented houses and apartments rather than spending months in hotels. I don't know how they fared for transport - they could well have been supplied with hire cars for the duration of their stay - but I know of one SkyService pilot who won a Rover 75 in a newspaper competition whilst he was here. I don't know if he took it back to Canada with him!