The first time I flew on a 707 was on a Wardair affinity* charter from Calgary to Gatwick in the early 70s. They had two - a 707-311C and 707-396C.

Here's CF-ZYP at Gatwick with a CP Air DC-8 behind:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....bccbb68370.jpg

Who does the other DC-8 belong to?

* Before the rules were simplified, passengers had to be members of an association that chartered the aircraft. I was a member of the Calgary Firefighters Association! :)

Other DC8 looks like Capitol Airlines and is that that a Caledonian Britannia in it's background ?

That's a Capitol DC-8 beyond.

But the Air Gambia flights between Banjul and LGW we're fully scheduled flights, not holiday "charter" flight's.

If your going to use Air Gambia as an example that might even include other fully scheduled airline's operating the Boeing 707 into the UK at the time such as Air Lanka and Air Seychelles. But again the topic is regarding holiday charter airlines that operated the Boeing 707/720 during the 1970/80's.

As did many, many, many other airlines but the topic is ..... "Holiday jets, this time, the Boeing 707 and 720".

The thread is a follow up up to the two previous thread's regarding Boeing 727 and Boeing 737 holiday charter operators and airlines.

summer 89 saw lots of MEA 720’s at NCL in particular subbing for Paramount as you say.

Both MEA Boeing 720s and the Air Gambia 707 did quite a lot of sub-charters in the mid 1980s. When the Air Europe 757 had its mishap at Funchal in 1987, they ended up using the Air Gambia 707 still in half Air Mauritius colours and a Zairean-registered 707 from Scibe Airlift on subcharter flying in formation to cover the schedule. [Lord only knows what the CAA and any airline compliance department would make of such wet-lease activities nowadays.]

We'd flown out on holiday to the Canaries on G-BLVH a few days before its incident in Funchal and ended up quite badly delayed on our return with AE flights from Arrecife to both Gatwick and Manchester due to leave at much the same time. The Air Gambia and Scibe 707s both arrived in ACE amidst much noise and black smoke flying for Air Europe which raised my hopes that the return trip was going to be quite exciting ... until 757 G-BPGW then rolled up as well - and guess which one we ended up on!

The British Midland 707s did a whole series of Los Angeles charters in 1984 for the Olympics. I think it was early 1985 when G-BFLD, BFLE and BMAZ as the remaining trio of 707s were retired.

The interior shot of the Monarch B720B is G-AZFB, not FE. Monarch never had one registered G-AZFE.

Great photo though and happy memories of flying on those aircraft for days out in Corfu, Malaga etc......

Good spot dc9-32. 'FB indeed.....fat fingers on my part. Return flight, OM4327 on 01.02.80 was on G-BHGE. Due to fog at Linate, we caught up with 'GE in Genoa....first time I'd ever seen the Med.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....044d4698f.jpeg

Not really applicable to this thread but I flew out for a 12 month working Holiday in Zimbabwe from a very warm Gatwick in June/July 1983 on board an Air Zimbabwe 707-330 (ex Lufthansa),the flight was full and the cargo hold was being loaded for a long time :).
We rolled along the rwy forever it seemed and actually got wheels off just before the rwy threshold lights (or so it seemed).
I returned to Zim a couple of times for gliding holidays,in 1985 I flew out courtesy of Swissair,I think it was an A310 ? out of Gatwick to Zurich or Geneva ? and then it was a lovely DC8 down to Harare,hardly any pax on board so got great service from the Hosties incl endless drinks :),I guess the return was also DC8 to either Zurich or Geneva and then A310 to Gatwick.

MEA became quite expert at both long and short term leasing out during the various difficulties in Lebanon - the 747s spent a long time with BA. They operated sometimes still from Beirut airport, barriered off, and when things got too difficult there moved over to Larnaca in Cyprus. They were a pretty professional operation throughout, which probably aided various CAAs helping them along by OK'ing the subcharters and other work they did. They kept 707s longer than anyone else (were they the last 707 operator scheduled into Heathrow ?) as they couldn't get hull insurance when on the ground at Beirut, where they lost more than half their fleet over time. Nor could anyone else get such insurance, which gave MEA an effective monopoly there.

I met a full MEA crew on a BA flight London to LAX, 1980s, who were positioning out to collect a 707 which had been undergoing the Quiet modifications at a California MRO. In uniform, the four of them had been given a squashed 4-across seat in the centre of Y in the BA 747, and having arrived from Beirut earlier in the day, were looking decidedly travel-weary by the end. Most of the pax around didn't notice the difference of uniform details, and spoke to them as if BA crew.

Do I recall a 707 operator (Omega ?) who used to turn up on holiday flight subcharters well into the 2000s ? Possibly the last one.

Anyone spot the mistake in the side view? Only one overwing exit! Most 720s in regular airline service had only one each side, but this limited seating capacity to 149 (not a problem in normal mixed class airline layouts of the time), This was no good for IT work so airlines like Monarch had an extra exit fitted (as on a 707) to increase capacity to 165.

707 Memories and photos -
There are some great posts and old photos above on here - superb!

I love the Spearair story (although they are Holiday DC-8's)
I saw both of theirs on the deck at Tenerife Los Rodeos early 1973 after we had stepped off the BCAL 707C that had just flown us in from LGW on a Horizon Holidays Sunday charter.
I do have a snap of that somewhere of all 3 parked next to each other.
Seems the founder owners of Spearair, Sterling, and Conair were all big ''characters''.

Thankfully, like the Holiday 1-11's, there were not too many serious incidents with Holiday 707's from the 1960's onwards.

That is up until the terrible Azores crash in 1989 of an Independent Air 707-331B flying Italian holidaymakers from Bergamo to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.
All 144 on board were killed when the 707 struck Mt. Pico Alto while on approach to Santa Maria Airport in the Azores for a scheduled stopover.
Causes included the Pilots failed to conduct an approach briefing, where they would have discussed the MSA of 3000 feet, then the incorrect setting of the Altitude Alert by 1000 feet too low, with the 707 descending in IMC to 2000 instead of the MSA of 3000 feet that was cleared by ATC.
An incorrect QNH given by ATC also led to the 707 being 240 feet lower than it should be, and the Crew's mistake in routing first to the VOR instead of the NDB.
Although the GPWS sounded multiple alarms before impact, the crew did not respond.
It was also noted that the AIRNAV charts being used for this airport were outdated by 27 years. The fact that their approach chart did not indicate that the primary NAV aid was the NDB, not the VOR; had this distinction been made clear, the crash would not have occurred as the plane would not have flown over Pico Alto in the first place.
Without any one of these factors the crash would not have happened.
In fact they almost missed the mountain anyway: had they been flying just 35 feet higher, they would have cleared the ridge.
Another question was why the Crew did not react to the GPWS alarms which sounded seven seconds before impact. Given how close they already were to clearing the mountain, time to react would have been sufficient to gain 35 feet and avoid the ridge. And yet no one in the Cockpit made any move to prevent the accident. Investigators turned to the NTSB for help in examining Independent Air’s pilot training.
The NTSB was disturbed to find that Independent Air was not teaching its pilots how to respond to GPWS alerts, even though this training was required by the FAA.
US investigators had previously recommended that the FAA check whether Operators were complying with this rule, but the FAA inspector assigned to Independent Air had NOT done so, and responses to GPWS were not covered in the airline’s training manual.
Independent Air did not have its own Simulator, so they sent it's Pilots to train at another airline which had configured its 707s differently, including their SIM.
When speeds and descent rates used at Independent Air were replicated in that SIM, the GPWS tended to go off during normal approaches. When this occurred, the Instructors either turned off the GPWS or outright told student pilots to ignore it.
This had conditioned pilots to believe that GPWS alerts during an approach were usually not real, and it was no surprise that when the alert sounded on flight 1851, the pilots reacted exactly as trained — by doing nothing at all.
There is an interesting Book, all about this little known crash by Francisco Cunha.
IDN 1851: The Santa Maria Air Disaster. (Il disastro delle Azorre): Independent Air 1851 - The Story of Portugal´s worst air disaster.

Other Holiday 707 incidents include a Sabena/Sobelair 707-329 whichcrashed in 1978,during a bounced landing on the nose gear at TCI Tenerife Los Rodeos.
There is a home video film of the crash-landing taken by a passenger in the Terminal waiting for the same plane to go home to BRU on.
The nose gear collapsed and the 707 OO-SJE skidded down the runway, catching fire, but all 198 on board escaped OK. The 707 burnt out on the runway.
Windshear on final was a possible factor.

Landing Video here -

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....8aa4b0bfd0.jpg
OO-SJE TCI
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e7bc60a63f.jpg
OO-SJE TCI


In 1979 Quebecair Holiday Charter Flight QB714 from YYZ, a 707-123B was approaching UVF St Lucia's Hewanorra Airport when it was caught by windshear.
When already over the runway threshold the aircraft stopped descending The Co-Pilot, who was pilot flying, retarded the throttles.
However at moment the aircraft had passed the windshear zone it suddenly slammed down onto the runway from a height of 6 m.
The Boeing 707 bounced twice, causing the nose gear to collapse. The Captain skilfully kept the Boeing 707 on the runway as it slid for 2000 feet and came to rest 4100 feet from the threshold. There was no fire. All 171 on board escaped OK.
The aircraft was a write off and was broken up at St. Lucia.

In 1981 another Sobelair 707 OO-SJA operating flight OO1915 to Tenerife Sur TFS and Las Palmas LPA, took off from runway 02 at BRU Zaventem Airport.
As the airplane was climbing through an altitude of 7000 feet there was a violent explosion in the no. 3 engine. An uncontained failure had caused a serious fire in the engine.
The first extinguishing bottle was fired, but to no avail. The fire finally went out after the second bottle was fired.
The Crew returned immediately to the airport and were cleared for an emergency approach to runway 25L. While turning onto finals, the airplane overshot the extended centreline of runway 25L. The captain then decided to land on runway 25R.
After touchdown thrust reverse of engine nos. 1 and 4 was selected, and maximum wheel brakes were used to try to slow down.
The pilot was afraid that the aircraft couldn't be stopped on the runway and steered the Boeing 707 off the left side of the runway.
All 118 on board escaped OK.
The aircraft was damaged beyond repair and withdrawn from use at Brussels.
The engine failure was attributed to a fatigue failure of a fan blade of the 10th stage of the compressor.

All told, the 707 on holiday charter flights had quite an impressive safety record.

Rog747: Seems the founder owners of Spearair, Sterling, and Conair were all big ''characters''.

Oh yes, it seems the business attracts big characters.
Rumour was that mr Keihänen copied the fur coat theme from Simon Spies.

The Spearair story has lots of twists. So much that couple of years ago there was a tv series made out of it, beginning from 1972 and the first Spearair holiday flight.
Theres been songs written about his businesses too.
But as one can imagine there are a million stories to tell of a guy who farmed trouts in his swimming pool at home.

I'd love to see the picture of the spearairs, if you can find it.

I apologise the off topic, this has nothing to do with 707's. But goes with the holiday theme though.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c8ea21f9a4.png
CP Empress of Sydney

Didn't last for long. Written off after 12 weeks.

One other "holiday" 707 accident, fortunately without casualties, was Airtours' G-APFK which was lost during crew training at Prestwick in March 1977.

Oh yes they did. Ex Northwest ones. I flew on one ex CX 707 with Laker from LGW to ORD on 30 April 1378, and the same airframe back to LGW 4 weeks later.

British airtours B707 hard landing at Heraklion and flown home against the advice of the station engineer.
https://assets.publishing.service.go...975_G-APFH.pdf

Exactly.

These sort of uniformed comments are unreal 🤔
Cathay Pacific Airways purchased 12 former Northwest Orient Boeing 707 aircraft in 1971.

Cathay Pacific Airways first Boeing 707-355C VR-HGH entered service on the 24 August 1971 from Hong Kong to Tokyo via Taipei and Osaka.

Indeed. I think by about 1975, just after the last Convair 880 had gone and before the first Tristar arrived, Cathay's fleet may have been wholly 707. Suppose you could make a point that they never bought a new one - they were all secondhand from Northwest.

Avianca:- https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/411727590919516715/ Flew in one.

Standard Airways, Seattle based, operated a pair of ex Qantas 138Bs. One came to a very sticky end at YVR 8/02/68. It was chartered to CP and in their colours when it arrived back at Vancouver from Honolulu and landing in zero vis demolished two buildings four light aircraft and hit a couple of DC8s. Only two dead.
That was the end of Standard and they went bust owing money to everyone at Seatac.
Pacific Western bought the remaining aircraft which was sent to Tulsa for major by AA.
We picked it up from there and had to clear US customs outbound at Seatac. It was still in Standard Airways colours with a very small Canadian registration. No-one wanted to know us and it took some persuading to get a parking finger and ground handling.
PWA operated this and another ex Qantas 138B for a couple of years based at YVR. Gatwick was the main destination and Dusseldorf the next most popular. Usually had to tech stop Keflavik eastbound and Sondestrom westbound.

Winter was mainly Honolulu or Puerto Vallarta out of the prairies. Arriving back into Saskatoon or Calgary in the early hours of the morning the prairie farmers would have a long walk across the ramp in minus 30C in their newly acquired Hawaiian shirts and shorts.

Description and photos of the accident here :

The Fate of Canadian Pacific Airlines' Boeing 707 by Henry Tenby | Henry Tenby - Classic Airline DVDs / Entrepreneur / and more

Quite surprised that the sister aircraft with PWA had to stop between Vancouver and London. These early Qantas 707s were a shortened version for extra range, and when refitted with fan engines produced a pretty capable aircraft. I went into Sondrestrom on Wardair's 727, but never on their 707-320Cs, same engines, larger airframe. Pretty sure Laker used to do Gatwick to LAX with their -138Bs.

Flew to Cyprus in 1977 on honeymoon in an Airtours B707.

I was current on the B707 at the time and in answer to an earlier query Yes on UK ATPL was rated 707/720.


Same as later I was rated B767/757 though this time I flew both.

Whilst on the B707 I also flew the B737/200

Were you satisfied with the PF's performance on this important journey, or too dazed and in-love to notice ? ;-)

I never knew it was permitted to be current on more than one type. Did the similarity of the 707 and 737 cockpits have anything to do with this ?

Re B707/B737 This was overseas so they made their own rules. Not a problem.

Just had to remember to trim down when selecting Flaps 14.
​​​

Cannot remember what landing was like!!!

LGW-LAX was tight on the BCAL 320Cs. We occasionally had to drop into Las Vegas or Salt Lake or Edmonton. Not a hope in 138B.

707-138B
 

The 707-138B versus the -320B or C could not do the same missions.

The -320B/C ADV had more powerful engines and a higher fuel capacity (23800 v 17300 US gallons), and of course a 151000 kgs MTOW v 129000 kgs on the smaller 707.
The -138B had the same MTOW as a -120B, but was 10' shorter and thus had a lighter OEW.

Laker and BWIA who flew the -138B to the Caribbean from LGW both stopped usually at the Azores, or Gander/Bangor.
Laker used the smaller 707 to assist the Skytrain start up and could make JFK.
Laker carried 154/158 pax.

Qantas longest -138B sectors were SYD-SIN HNL-NAN SFO-HNL YVR-HNL JFK-SFO LHR-JFK LHR-BDA
From late 1964 saw their new Fiesta Route.
A QF Boeing 707 ‘V-jet’ would took off weekly from Sydney en route to London, via the opposite direction to the original Kangaroo Route.
It would have to stop several times for fuel, and possibly the route planners tried to make it as scenic as possible, with stops including Fiji, Tahiti, Acapulco, Mexico City, The Bahamas and Bermuda. The first service was aboard VH-EBM, the very aircraft that John Travolta would later own ,and the last -138B to be built for QF in 1964.
All up, the flight took 45 hours – 27 of them in the air.
For some reason at PPT was a day long stop arriving at 0835 from NAN, then departed at 2300 to ACA, but not on the way back.
The longest leg was across the Pacific from Tahiti to Acapulco, and the shortest leg was to Acapulco from Mexico’s capital, just an hour’s flight away.
However, this short hop served a very important technical purpose. Mexico City was too high above sea level for the Boeing to take off with full tanks, so the aircraft would fill up in Acapulco for the long flight ahead to Tahiti.

PER-MRU was not a -138B route but a newer -338C was used from 1966.

QF's -138B's had a usual config of 20F and 84Y, or 20F/78Y, or 28F/66Y all with a F lounge.
F had 42'' and Y had at least a 34'' pitch.
(There was until 1965, 20F/72Y)
There was also a 120Y.

The Fiesta route through Mexico did not attract the best loads, and was thus often used to place "£10 emigrants" to Australia, for whom Qantas had the contract. For those uncertain of the geography, it must have made Australia seem a very long way away indeed.

What were the diversion airports when flying the long overwater Pacific legs ? Obviously Qantas were (perhaps still are) the world's safest airline in terms of lack of major incidents, so the routes were well planned and executed, but all the same....

Well there was no early ETOPS (was it 60 minutes for a twin jet back then? and with a 4 engined jet if you lost one you carried on to the nearest, or turned back if you could, the nearest of course, could be in the case of the Pacific be your actual destination.

There was Wake and Midway islands used but they were way North of the Fiesta Route.
From Fuji you then have American Samoa and the Cook islands, and New Caledonia behind you.
Not much else then until HNL...

I saw on Facebook a post about UTA flying their Caravelles on their Pacific feeder routes to Oz, and they did SYD and BNE direct -Noumea. No idea what sort of basic ''ETOPS'' there was in those days.
I thought it was 60 mins...

I believe the 60 minutes was an FAA issue only for US-registered aircraft.

There were several early twin jet over-ocean operators, of which Sterling Airways of Denmark, with Caravelles, had to be the leader. They ran these regularly on holiday flights transatlantic to San Francisco, or to Natal in northern Brazil, staging through the Canaries, or to Thailand, across the Bay of Bengal.

UTA had just two Caravelles, at opposite ends of the earth. One ran from Paris a few times a week to obscure African points which did not merit a DC8, the other was based between Papeete and Noumea, two onetime French colonies in the South Pacific, and ran between them and to Australia and New Zealand. Likewise Fiji Airways, later badged as Air Pacific, ran a One-Eleven on routes which were wholly over water, to the same set of destinations. The French air force also based a couple of Caravelles at Papeete which ran out to the nuclear testing grounds on oddball French South Pacific islands in the middle of nowhere, and I understand they and UTA sometimes chartered their aircraft back and forth. I don't believe any of these long overwater twin operations ever came to grief

Longest sector I did with Qantas on the 138 was 8.20 SYD-SIN. Longest on a PWA 138 was beginning of season empty ferry LGW-YVR 9.45.
Longest on a BCAL 320C was LGW - LAX 11.40
On the Qantas fiesta route we would position SYD - PPT -SYD on UTA DC8 which had a proper bar at the front of first class.
No diversions on PPT-ACA, it's very empty across there. Qantas had amazingly good navigators (apart from the chief nav who used to pass up heading chits with half degree alterations. This was the man who was twice so far off track into HNL they were intercepted by the USAF ) this was long before inertial or gps and the loran coverage was not good so astro all the way.
ACA departure both ways was at night. It was a very new airport so they hadn't quite sorted out the runway lighting. There was a cable crossing the runway about a third from the end and that would sometimes break as you crossed it making for an interesting final part of the takeoff.
Once did a triple Tahiti-Mexico shuttle. Two weeks in Tahiti was tough!
Tahiti had only three flights a week UTA Qantas and PanAm out of HNL.

rog747 knows more about the details of the Qantas aircraft than I do although I used to fly them! It was a long time ago.I don't remember the first lounge. There was a crew bunk opposite the first class galley.

Never saw UTA Caravelles in SYD. We did SYD- NOU in the 707, only about 2.20 flight time so always somewhere within an hour.

Thank you for the replies. I suppose the long overwater flights are often a planned leap of faith and as said, no-one came to grief! I hadn't realised that UTA used their Caravelle on such long routes, 2 engines to infinity and beyond! Were these 2 examples the ones that went to Air Afrique by chance ? UTA was a decent enough airline, although I only flew the 'shorter' legs to the French Caribbean/Florida from Paris on the DC-10's

I note the theme about Caravelles operating miles away from their various HQs. I've read that in the 1970s, Britannia Airways 737s could be seen in the Far East and southeast Asia. I don't know if this was before, during or after their pair of 707s was doing the rounds.

WHBM 60 minutes was not a US only rule

Wasn't the rule that sectors longer tha 60 minutes from an alternative airport require more than 2 engines? Hence 4 engined transports. AFAIK the rule still exists, but an exception is accepted for twin jet engines with proven reliabilty of more then so and so hours per engine inop, including essential systems. That exception is certified as ETOPS, and if demonstrated at first delivery of the type as Early-ETOPS.
What is WHBM? There is no google for it.

It's a poster's 'handle'.