Charts
in the 70s BEA charts were very different to those in BA long haul?
Pity my post re the unofficial meeting place for crew was deleted..it added a bit of reality and humour and no doubt many fine memories.

Didn't Kershaw House, on the Great West Road, used to be the home of BEA Pension Scheme in the 60's and 70's ?

Kershaw House was indeed the registered office and HQ of the Air Corporations Joint Pension Scheme.

As the name suggests, staff of BEA, BOAC, BEA Airtours, British Air Services and other related organisations were eligible.

Yes, now that you've jogged my memory, it was in the basement. It wasn't unheard of for some who'd enjoyed a long evening in the CC to then retire to the 4th floor to sleep it off, especially if on an early the next day.

As ahs been pointed out seevral of these entities were not BEA alone . IAL was a company i knew well from their Gulf telecoms activities (I worked for Cable and Wireless a competitotr in that region . IALran Abu Dhabi telecoms and C&W Dubai telecoms so that had to be sorted out when the Emirates states was formed. My future wife was secretary to the boss at IAL for a time and she lived on the 'other' airways housing cheme estate off Cranford Lane opposite where the BOAC sports club and Fairey Aviation were . I think that was a partial JV with Hounslow council although like the Stanwell estate all the names were aviation related, Brabazon Rd Bleriot Rd etc . Very different to todays ghettos , mostly private developemnts now , Both estates had low density housing compared to today with most properties having decent sized gardens and all houses set well back from the roads and big green expanses seperating different areas . Especially among the mums in Stanwell there were a good few distinctly non West London accents mostly Dorset (Bournemouth/Hurn) and 'Brissol ' as BOAC had its wartime and immediate postwar activities located in those parts . BEA of course were in Northolt hence the HO in Ruislip.


I had several friends on the Stanwell estate ( l lived in the village , always emphasis on that word) and its maze like structure was perfect for early teens lads racing bikes around for hours at a time trying to catch or evade your mates. Also had a nice recreation ground tennis courts and possibly a bowling green plus a social club which was the scene of my earliest adventures with the opposite sex . Easy to criticise these things as 'typical nationalised industries but compare them to the shabby way people are treated nowadays. I dont know what happened to all the 'Airways Estate ' properties in Stanwell as I moved away in 1977 but no doubt most were sold off and like Cranford a lot of infill additional housing added it all being far too socialist for a lady who didnt believe in Society . (now there was a comment/idea whose consequences we suffer today)

Ex Mrs C got a flat in a BA area in Stanwell and even after she left BA and became a nurse again close to Ashford hospital, they ley her stay in the flat while she was nursing c1981 - 1983

I find it interesting, and more than a bit sad, that the employment practices seem to have gone backwards in terms of worker benefits, especially when compared with the advances of the 1850s and later. Thinking in terms of worker's housing - the GWR Railway village in Swindon,(although the sewage system was appalling and a disgrace, especially considering the work of Chadwick and Bazelgette), the GWR Sickness Fund - on which Bevan based the NHS - the advances in workers housing, education and welfare at Alfred Krupp ('You get born in Krupp hospital, go to Krupp nursery, educated in a Krupp school, work for Krupp, go to a Krupp paid for church to get married, live in a Krupp house, die in a Krupp hospital and get buried in Krupp graveyard) was the popular but somewhat unofficial claim - all provided that you didn't rock the boat and be too much of trade unionist. Under Francis Webb at Crewe, things were less paternalist but promotion was very difficult if you weren't a Conservative voting C of E frequent church attender. In Alsace, under the great locomotive engineer, Alfred de Glehn at the Societe Alsacienne, where relatively (for the time) decent housing was provided. Some vestiges lasted until the latter half of the 20th century, such as the GEC Pension fund - for all Lord Weinstock was criticised, he set up the GEC Pension fund, )The Stanhope Trust) with a rule that no more than 5% of assets could be in GEC or subsidiaries, and a board of Trustees, who were therefor able to prevent a Robert Maxwell thievery attempt (if anyone should have his grave used as a public lavatory, he should!). In the 1950s, the NCB built housing estates for miners coming from exhausted Northumberland collieries to North Nottinghamshire - you don't see the NHS building affordable rented housing for their workers, even in areas where they badly need nurses and doctors and housing isn't affordable. (Although I suppose that these days, the Treasury would block any attempt!)

Does anybody have any photographs of the Heston training centre and the simulators?

At the start of my airline career, I stayed in digs just off North Hyde Lane. That was also an Airways Housing estate.

Off at a slight tangent, those were interesting and fun days, I think. A couple of names spring to mind - Graeme A and Tony J, particularly - and a plonker in HR whose name escapes me, but for whom I would have joined in the fun in the sand.

I spent a short spell at Viking House on the NW corner of Heston in 1974 where there were sims and 'systems trainers'; there was also large social club to the south adjacent to the M4 .
I think many ATCO Cadets did our 2 week stint at Viking in the late '70s.

Slightly changing the topic but when I moved here 38 years ago my neighbours were retired BEA staff who called their house Beaways.

As previously stated the properties were passed to "Airways Housing Society" which continued until the late 1990s still offering properties to rent and buy [via shared ownership, so letting staff on lower incomes get on the property ladder] when it was sold off by BA to a separate housing society that is still in existence. The problem that most housing societies have nowadays, is that they are obliged by law to offer even properties that were previously only rented out, to be purchased by the tenant if they express a desire to buy the property and can raise the funds. This has meant many housing societies have had to sell off a lot of their properties.

The airline also owned a Hostel in Cranford that used to house hundreds of both Engineering and General airline apprentices which was in existence until the late 1980s early 1990s when they started winding down their apprenticeship schemes and no longer needed the facility. It had also for a time, been used to house a large number of Metropolitan Police cadets while they trained, whilst also still being used by BA. The Hostel site was sold off in the 1990s [when BA was selling everything off] and for a while was used to house asylum seekers and homeless people [whole families to a room that used to house one apprentice!] until that was shut down. The site is now a 4* boutique hotel [The Heston Hyde Hotel]

The Trident Club was indeed the one close to the A40, It was sold off to long ago and became the C&L Country Club [and is still there]

Thanks for scratching that itch MAC 40612 (Starlifter reg ?).

The way BEA, and others looked after their staff back in the day was, by today's standards, nothing short of incredible. That they recognised the challenges faced by apprentices on low wages as they learnt, staff that were coming and going whilst on flight duty, ground staff who needed to live close to the airport and social facilities for friendship and fitness whilst engendering better working dynamics.

The infamous Thorncliffe House.

Ah Dave, at least it did 'what it says on the tin'...

Jack they didn't look after cabin crew nor new flight deck. In the 70s cabin crew got a 100% pay increase prior to a threatened strike and a tabloid waiting to publish an article about a married steward with a child receiving supplementary benefits because they were living below the poverty line. It was similar for concessions especially for crew. I recieved zero help when I joined.

Bp

Having read your interesting book (s) i know you have an issue with BEA and can understand why as well having grown up in a town village where almost everyone was BOAC or BEA and it was clear to me even in my teens that some organisations held undue sway over both corporations.
Nuff said on that

I dont recall any 'BA' cabin crew that lived in the village or on the Airways housing development although people from all kinds of areas of the airline did live there, a couple of Pan Am cc did live in the village as I recall .
As for aircrew i do recall my school friend who went through Hamble straight from school and then to BOAC getting a pretty decent mortgage compared to what I could afford and he had a decent car so he can't have been doing that badly More senior a/c seemd to live in places like Ascot, Sunningdale and Camberley, my friend moved to Windlesham after not all that long as an FO . Captain country as my father used to refer to them.

Camberley still seemed pretty popular with flight crew while I lived there with a few house names on places like Crawley Ridge (very leafy very pricey) having obvious aviation connections along with some personalised licence plates 4 DME and LHR 27L being two I recall seeing over the years I lived there

Pax Brit..most of it changed for the better after lord king took over for BEA copilots although hamsters and other cadets were sold out which affected command time as most of my mates who stayed at Heathrow took 20 years to a command.
I had some fabulous times in BEA but the politics as you have written “Nuff said on that”...I had a very thick file when I went to BOAC, John D’arcy gave me a chance and when I left said that there would always be a job for me there. No doubt he knew from the guild those with whom I had crossed swords and there was a movement to stop one of those BEA managers climbing up the new management ladder..unsuccessfully. A couple of trainers mentioned that when DIbley’s brown bomber air Mauritius crews came back he tried to put the kibosh on it as they may have learnt bad habits!..Bad habits..biggest cowboy that I flew with.