BEA and Northeast Viscount 800s
 

Many of us know that Northeast was a subsidiary of BEA via the British Air Services holding company. Did the two airlines operate on each other's services at any time ? The reason I ask is I recently saw some old film from Leeds Bradford Airport circa 1971. It features a Northeast Viscount starting and taxiing and throughout there are shots of a BEA Viscount - still in red square livery - parked on about stand 5. The only BEA-liveried Viscounts I remember at LBA were in the Speedjack colours during 1976, operating BA flights while the ex-Northeasts were being resprayed for about the fourth time!

Thankyou.

Didn't BEA operate a seasonal flight from Jersey to London Bradford Airport with a Viscount during the period you mentioned. If that's the case it might answer your question regarding the old footage you viewed.

Whilst we're on the subject of Northeast.

British United Airways used to operate a Southampton-Leeds/Bradford-Newcastle route in the late 1960s until 1971. It always surprised me at the time as to why Northeast didn't pick up the route. The route was axed prior to the formation of BCAL after the BUA/Caledonian merger. At the time Southampton Airport already had service with BEA to Jersey and Cambrian operated a Cardiff-Bristol-Southampton-Paris LBG route both using Viscount aircraft. On a personal note I would have liked to have seen Northeast at Southampton Airport.

​​​​​​I've always had a personal interest in the airline as my third ever flight was on a Northeast liveried Trident 1E with British Airways titles flying a return trip from London Heathrow to Palma in September 1974.

BEA never operated LBA-JER

I wasn't one hundred percent sure if they did to be honest I was more or less assuming they did considering their route network at the time. But I'm glad to be corrected.

It was a BKS/Northeast route

By the way, there was no merger between Caledonian and BUA. Caledonian took them over as recommended by the Edwards commitee on future air transport in 1969 which was fully supported by the Labour and succeeding Conservative governments

Wasn't it 'Channel' before that?
I remember a good deal of confusion at West Drayton at the time; sometimes the FPL was addressed 'BKS - Yankee Delta' and other times it was 'Channel - Yankee Delta'.

No. Channel never took delivery of Yankee Delta, nor did they ever at any time operate scheduled services from LBA

Wondering about the attribution of this film to 1971. The BEA Speedjack livery was on a BEA Helicopters S61N I flew on from Penzance to St Marys and return in May 68. Did red square last into the seventies?

Until the age of 9 I lved on the Beechwood estate in Horsforth with a rear garden backing onto Trinity and All Saints College. The (then) 33 approach and 15 climb out were in full view from the rear of the house.

There was a period when Viscounts in BEA Red Square livery were sighted regularly if not frequently. I seem to remember reading somewhere that when the V806 Viscounts were being transferred to BKS BEA leased them and kept them under close observation.

Not correct. BKS/Northeast had own AOC watched over by CAA
Please. This is degenerating into an airlines and routes thread. This forum is not like that!!!!

Speed Jack was premiered at Farnborough in September 1968
NOT BEFORE

That's consistent with other information in which case I've misremembered and am mixing trips to the Scillies. We went in in both 68 and 69.

So far as I can see the presenting question was about the presence of a BEA 'Red Square' liveried Viscount at LBA in 1971. I can certainly remember seeing them in the relatively early days of the 15/33 runway.

One possibility is Manchester diversions. Another some swapping of machines between BAS and its parent to cover tech etc issues. I'm fairly sure we saw the odd Cambrian V806 at Leeds as well; similar livery but red instead of yellow and a stylised dragon on place of the NE compass point.

I stick by my original assertion that I've read somewhere that the V806 machines were for a time either leased to BKS or operated on their behalf by BEA including some augmentation of LBA ground crews.

FWIW the G INFO register shows several of the V806 series machines with BKS/Northeast as Charterers.

Which Yankee Delta was this?

The V806 machines were in the G-AOYx sequence. The first was AOYF (C/N255) but was written off at Johannesburg before entering BEA service.

I'm not quite sure on the time line, but if my memory serves me correctly, towards the end of the "British Air Services" operation that was Northeast and Cambrian didn't the BA bean (pardon the pun) counters, possibly in collusion with the marketing department split up the regional operations of BEA into "Channel Islands Division" based nominally at BHX, and "Scottish Division". The Channel Islands and Scottish fleets were V.802s with Northeast and Cambrian being allocated V.806 variants. Is the "Channel" being referred to the BEA Channel Islands operation perhaps, rather than Channel Airways? Again my rusty memory recalls that the BEA Channel Islands operation used the callsign "Bealine" at least to begin with, though later on BHX service flew under the IATA prefix "BZ" with callsign "Albion".

I can't readily think of which airframe "Yankee Delta" would have been, it certainly doesn't show on any of the BEA, Northeast or Cambrian fleet lists that I can find.

BEA and Channel both operated Comet G-APYD, though I tend to think Chevvron's quoted callsign was illustrative rather than exact... :}

The BZ IATA prefix and call sign Albion were used by BA's Regional Division from around 1977.

With the merger of the Northeast, Cambrian and Channel/Scottish operations in April 1976 the practice seemed to be Bealine for domestic flights and Speedbird for international sectors with four digit flight numbers. However by the summer of 76 aircraft operating from Leeds had reverted to NS/Northeast and three digit callsigns. One suspects a possible overload of similar callsigns either on Airways or in the London TMA.

Was BZ/Albion used before c1977?

Are we barking up the wrong tree with YD being Yeadon?

Maybe I have misunderstood the reference to “YD”; but doesn’t it refer to the Trident G-AVYD, which Northeast operated.

Only to the very lazy. :O

For as long as I can remember, Leeds-Bradford/Yeadon has been LBA/EGNM. Unless ATC were in the habit of inventing their own designators, which seems unlikely.