Propax
I was a regular on the BCAL Santiago flight coming back and forth to school in the UK when my father worked there. I used to do it 3 times a year for 4 years from the early 1970,s at first with an “ Auntie “ - retired stewardess and then as I got older on my own. Flight of 19 hours I seem to remember as being some what aspirational, as after travelling to London I always seemed to miss the connection and end up being put up in a hotel before onward flight. As for what the airports were like in that period down route I would have to say they were a lot more primitive. Indeed my parents had a photo of me at Palma circa 1963 besides a Nissan hut with a donkey and hitch rail which was the terminal. We flew in an Ambassador on that occasion. All the aforementioned BCAL flights were on 707 and stops were Freetown, Rio, BA, Santiago I think, and from Gatwick. Flights in UK to Scotland were BCAL 1-11.

Regards
Mr Mac

The 138B, all of which were short bodied, never did the South Pacific route. That was introduced when we got the 338s.
Original routing from Dec 65 was Sydney Nandi Papeete Acapulco Mexico City Bermuda London. Later Auckland replaced Nandi. Sydney crews operated to Mexico City where the London based crews took over. A weeks slip in Tahiti was hard to take.
Tahitia - Acapulco was usually around 8 hours. Nothing much between the two so hard work for the nav. Extra oxygen fitted to enable cruise at, I seem to remember, 18000ft if there was decompression at ETP.

Well when I was flying EBH-M in 1965-66 they were short bodied. Think I might have noticed the difference.

There are some really interesting things on this thread, thank you.

A few points/questions please:

1. rog747 I was intrigued by your mention of flights operating via Burma in your earlier post. It didn't strike me as an obvious calling point for an en-route stop as I thought they were a very isolationist country at the time, and I seem to recall that Rangoon had a short runway. I know I once looked into travelling there at around that time and the visa terms were very restrictive. Do you have any more detail please?

2. Also in the 70s I flew from Heathrow to Malta on an Air Malta Boeing 720B. I'm sure the flight was in excess of 3 hours, so would this put it as mid-haul at the time? I last flew there on a FR 737 from Leeds a couple of years ago, similar timings, but would now certainly put it in the short haul range.

3. Having mentioned it, could someone tell me why the 720B was regarded as being sufficiently different from the 707 so as to have its own designation?

Cheers.

In the 60s the navigator was the hard working one on long haul. In Qantas we were lucky enough to have a superb lot, apart from the chief nav who would pass up heading chits with half degree alterations but still got bounced twice going into Honolulu as he was so far off track.
It was astro all the way,and, as so many of our routes were along the ITCZ ,there would often be long periods without a star in sight. Tahiti-Acapulco was night both ways.
The toughest route for the navs was an Electra service Perth Cocos Mauritius Joburg all at much lower levels than the 707 so even less chance of a shot.