Category: Airlines Of Europe

The Eastern Air Lines shuttle was a pioneering idea in the busy US North-east market offering no-reservation guaranteed seat service between the super busy business destinations of New York, Washington and Boston. There are few markets that can support such a concept but travel from the UK regions to the London Heathrow was always a good contender. In 1975 the new British Airways decided to see if it could replicate the massive success of Eastern’s shuttle in the UK.

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Early EU F28s: Fokker Fellowships 1969-1971

19/2/2019

Following its success with the F27 Friendship Fokker’s move into pure jets was a risk that took a long while to pay off. Interestingly far from being a ‘regional’ type aircraft the earliest F28 operators saw the Fellowship as a mainline aircraft and it was not unusual to see the type in operation on charter routes from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean that in later years would occupy an A300 or Tristar.

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Interflug 154s: East Germany’s Mysterious Trijets

30/10/2018

The Tupolev TU-154 is the most successful jet airliner that the Soviet Union ever produced. Sturdy, reliable (at least from the TU-154B onwards) and at least vaguely efficient it went on to have a production run of over 1,000 units and serve extensively with almost every country that had any kind of allegiance to the USSR. About the only exception to this was East Germany where only two TU-154s were ever entered onto the register.

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Vienna Longer Haul: Austrian A340s

2/8/2018

By the early 90s the A310s had proved their value and given Austrian the start they needed on long haul routes. In fact before the last A310 arrived Austrian had already ordered its next long haul product – the four engined A340. The first pair was ordered in September 1991 with a further pair optioned.

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Vienna Long Haul: Austrian A310s

28/7/2018

Austrian Airlines was for many years purely a regional European national airline and although it had dabbled in long haul flights briefly during the 70s it wasn't until the mid-1980s that it finally gained aircraft with the capability to operate long haul routes effectively. These were operated by Airbuses stubby A310, which successfully enabled growth and the acquisition of higher capacity stablemates.

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Minerve Magic: French Deregulation Pioneer

16/5/2018

Charter airlines have come and gone regularly and many barely merit a mention. Some however deserve recognition and Minerve definitely falls into that category. It was a pioneer in opening up the tightly regulated French market. Not only was it first in France to operate the MD-80, it was also the first French charter 747 operator, first to challenge Air France in the overseas territories and Air Inter domestically.

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City Jets: Lufthansa’s 737 Launch

20/4/2018

Boeing focused its initial jet offerings on the long and then medium range sections of the market leaving fertile ground for competitors to produce jets for the short hauls. In fact Boeing was so late to the market that it couldn't find a launch customer out of the traditional US trunk airlines and instead surprised everyone by looking towards Europe. Lufthansa and the 737 would prove a match made in heaven.

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Southern Flight: Südflug Seven Seas

31/3/2018

Südflug International was a pioneer of aviation in Germany. It was the first airline in West Germany after the war, was instrumental in the development of the Canary Islands as a tourist destination and was the first German airline to operate transatlantic charters. Nonetheless today it is largely forgotten and so it was a pleasure that Aeroclassics recently saw fit to release an example of its fleet as it lets me explore their history a little.

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Hippie Express: Loftleidir's Low Cost Long-haul

7/3/2018

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Iceland sits in a fortuitous position in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Wow Air is currently leveraging this benefit but it is hardly the first airline to do so. That accolade goes to Loftleidir Icelandic, which for many years found a way around the strict regulated transatlantic market to provide the world's first low cost long haul scheduled service.

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East Meets West: Malev’s First 737s

13/2/2018

Nowadays the end of Cold War seems obvious and the thought that the Soviet Union could have persisted bizarre; however in the 1980s this was far from the case. Aside from Tarom the airlines of the Warsaw Pact appeared staunchly pro-Soviet so the pivot to the West by Malev, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, was an important harbinger of things to come.

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Future Echoes: Lufthansa Express

20/6/2017

It's not just since the 2000s that the big European carriers have been taking a hard look at how to make money on short haul routes. As far back as the early 1990s Lufthansa was struggling and it was one of the first airline's to attempt the now largely discredited airline within an airline operation, which in the US alone has seen the likes of Delta Express, Song, Metrojet and TED appear and vanish. Lufthansa didn't go the whole hog but did create its Lufthansa Express concept as a first step.

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KLM 3TENS: Intra-european Widebodies

16/5/2017

The Dutch national airline, KLM, made an order for A310s in April 1979 but, unlike most of the type's European operators, the 3 tens did not see extended service and were sold after just over a decade. Their short KLM careers are however less a sign of problems with the type and more to do with changes at KLM itself.

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Highflyer Brought Down to Earth: Globe Air

14/1/2017

In the early 1950s Basel was the major charter gateway into Switzerland, however the traffic was dominated by foreign airlines. This led to the reorientation of Balair towards charters in 1957 and its takeover by Swissair in 1959, but also to the creation of a second very successful Swiss charter airline. This airline, Globe Air, is largely forgotten today but between 1961 and its tragic collapse in 1967 it was a successful competitor in the Swiss charter scene.

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Autair-Landor: The Tale of BA's Short One-Elevens

26/11/2016

British European Airways (BEA) showed almost no interest in the BAC One-Eleven, preferring to stay with its Viscounts and Tridents. Eventually it was forced, almost, to buy One-Eleven 500s however a few short One-Elevens also slipped into the fleet of it and its successor British Airways and would provide sterling service into the 1990s.

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I-BUSes: Alitalia A300s

11/10/2016

Alitalia had a diverse fleet during the 1970s and 80s as it bought new aircraft to replace older types but then sold them on at quite a young age. In fact it had already passed up Airbuses new widebody A300 once in the mid-1970s only to come back round to the type in the late 70s. It would go on to be the mainstay of its high density short and medium haul routes for nearly 20 years.

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I-Trijets: Alitalia's 727s

8/10/2016

Alitalia saw massive growth during the 1960s and 70s and acquired a large fleet of jets to service this. Despite these acquisitions by the early 1970s the airline was looking for a new medium range jet to build its European fleet around and fill the gap between its DC-9s and larger, increasingly obsolete DC-8s. Despite the arrival of the new Airbus and a larger variant of the DC-9 it was instead to Boeing that the carrier looked.

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Dan-Air's Comet Collection

15/7/2016

Dan-Air London was one of the rising stars of the British independent airline scene in the 1960s, adeptly building a strong charter and scheduled network. However it was the Comet 4 that really put the airline on the map. The carrier would be a happy home for well over half of all the Comets built and keep the type going into the 1980s.

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The Life of a Charter A300: cn 12

3/3/2016

The Airbus A300 in its B2 and B4 versions wasn't a very long-legged machine, however it provided widebody comfort on the busy leisure routes from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean sunspots in a more economical package than the Tristar and DC-10. The UK and Germany were the two biggest charter markets in Europe and the A300 was a major part of moving the masses for a wide variety of airlines. In this post we look at the career of one such A300 - construction number 12 - only the second Airbus A300B4 to be built.

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Seven Seas in Europe: DC-7Cs of the Mainland

9/2/2016

Flying long-haul during the 1950s was a prestigious activity and competition between the major airlines, in what was a heavily regulated environment, was mainly down to two things - quality of service and speed. To that end the airframe manufacturers spend their times trying to outwit each other in an arms race to create the fastest aircraft possible with the longest range. The two most successful manufacturers at the time were Lockheed and Douglas and their Constellation and DC-6/7 families took piston liners to the edge of the envelope.

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Olympic Zeus: Greek 747s

17/1/2016

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Olympic Airways has perhaps more than any other European national airline become the byword for mismanagement and lingering decline, however it wasn't always like that. Under the leadership of Aristotle Onassis the airline grew rapidly in the 1960s and peaked in the early 1970s when its first widebodies arrived.

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Scottish Virgin: Highland Express

7/1/2016

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Scotland has never had a successful national airline (except I guess Loganair), although several carriers have traded on a Scottish heritage including Caledonian (later BCal) and more recently the quasi-airline Air Scotland. During the 1980s another bold attempt to fly long-haul from Scotland was attempted with Highland Express, however, though its 747 looked stunning, it was a short-lived air bridge.

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BOAC in the 50s Pt2: Prop-Jets to Pure Jets

14/12/2015