G-AVZZ Bahamas Beauty Pt1: Eagle's Enterprise

British Eagle and Laker Airways represent well the pioneering spirit of British independent airlines during the 1960s and 70s. Both fought a David and Goliath struggle against the might of the UK government's chosen instrument, BOAC, in their ultimately doomed attempts to operate scheduled long-haul services. Connecting the two airlines together were a pair of the ultra-rare Boeing 707-138B...

As is well known the Boeing 707-138B was perhaps the ultimate expression of Boeing's willingness and ability to modify their baseline 707 to gain specific orders from airlines so that it would be the winner of the first jet equipment phase in the late 1950s. It was basically a shortened version of the 707-120 designed specifically for Qantas who required greater range than the series 120 could deliver. Only thirteen aircraft (VH-EBA-M) were ever built and these were delivered to Qantas from June 1959. Though initially groundbreaking for their range capabilities the 138Bs only served with Qantas a relatively short time. Their disposal began in early 1967 and ran until mid 1969 as they were replaced by 707-320Cs. Three went to the US supplemental airline Standard Airways, four went to Braniff International, two went to BWIA, two to Pacific Western and two to British Eagle.

VH-EBD 'City of Brisbane' (MSN 17699/ LN 54), originally delivered to Qantas in August 1959, was one of the pair which went to Eagle where she became G-AVZZ and was named 'Enterprise' in January 1968. By this time British Eagle had a long history of run-ins with the British government and BOAC. The UK, lacking a co-ordinated aviation strategy, had a Jekyll and Hyde approach to managing the independents thanks to the regular changes in Labour and Tory administrations, the machinations of BOAC and the at times perilous state of the British economy.

British Eagle's most recent attempt to gain rights for pure transatlantic routes had foundered in 1967 and they had also failed to avoid paying import tax on a pair of new Boeing 707-365Cs ordered from Boeing. The 707s were to be used to operate charter services but only one was ever delivered after the first aircraft's delivery was rescheduled to mid-1968 due to the tax dispute. The Bermudan registered 707-365C was almost immediately leased out to Middle East Airlines.

The two 707-138Bs were purchased to operate a new Caribbean IT charter programme. All three of the 707s were actually owned by Kleinwort Benson and operated by Eagle under leae-purchase agreements. In February G-AVZZ landed at Nassau in the Bahamas marking six year since British Eagle had been able to serve the destination (under its previous Cunard Eagle ownership and name). Services were expanded to Jamica, Barbados and Antigua but unfortunately for Eagle its services attracted the eye of the litigious BOAC once again. BOAC successfully argued that Eagle had been abusing the terms and conditions of its charter agreement and advertising its services as scheduled ones. As a result Eagle lost its charter rights at the end of the summer season but proposed to restart services from Luxembourg instead. Sadly the loss of the charter licence was one of several factors that combined together and led to the collapse of British Eagle in November 1968.

Both 707s would however remain on the British register as we shall see in part 2.