My brothers flew from Manchester to Split in 1991 on an Aviogenex TU134. Must have been nearly the end of the line for them by then. These aircraft never darkened LBA's doors. Aviogenex usually brought us their newly-acquired 732s but a 727 would occasionally drop in too.

Early in the 1987 season, LBA hosted two JAT 727s at the same time on a Sunday morning. There is a picture on Flickr of an Air Afrique-liveried example parked next to a regular JAT sistership. Super aeroplanes.

Further to the Adria Rombac theme from thirteen years ago, I've just remembered that the final LJU-LBA rotation for summer 1987 was operated by an aircraft in Marmara livery, rather than the part Tarom, part Adria scheme we had hitherto seen. It could well have been YR-BCK. I guess the few aircraft that Adria had leased had by this time gone home to Bucharest so Tarom had to come up with a quick substitute.

LBA 12/10/1987...YR-BCK on Adria flight in Marmara colours with TAROM titles.

Thought so! Many thanks.

The reason that Yugoslavian (and Romanian/Bulgarian too) tour operators used locally registered aircraft was to earn and preserve as much hard currency (Sterling, marks, francs etc) as possible. Communism/socialism wrecks economies, and countries that suffer under that system invariably run out of money, so print more, thereby making their currency worthless. In order to pay for vital imports (like oil) the East European countries pre-1989 ran cheap package holidays for the express purpose of earning Western convertible currency.