When did the famous British Lion on BCal, later used by Cal Air, finally disappear from the British aviation scene?
From Wikipedia.....so i guess the answer would be late 90s, i remember the Lion being on the tail of the A320s they had in the 90s
British Airways took over British Caledonian in the late 1980s and rebranded its charter arm British Airtours as Caledonian Airways. The livery was an updated version of the BCal livery with traits from the British Airways livery of 1984.
Through the 1990s, the British charter airline market underwent significant price-driven consolidation. The airlines flying older types almost all went under or were absorbed. Caledonian was in a strong position initially with a fleet of Boeing 757's and Lockheed L-1011s, but suffered as the charter airline market became more vertical, with each airline being fed primarily by customers from its in-house tour companies. Caledonian did not have such tour companies and instead provide flight capacity to other tour operators.
This subsidiary was finally sold by British Airways to the Carlson Group and ordered Airbus A320's to replace the Boeing 757's which returned to BA. ICAO code: CKT. The blue and gold colour scheme of the aircraft remained the same. The airline became part of the Thomas Cook Group (along with Flying Colours) in the late 1990s, which resulted in the aircraft forming part of the new JMC Air fleet in 2000. The Caledonian name and colours were lost to the new bright green colours of JMC. Most Tristars were quickly withdrawn and scrapped; two kept on flying for various cargo airlines still in Caledonian colours. JMC Air changed name again for the summer season of 2003 to Thomas Cook Airlines. Thomas Cook retired the former Caledonian DC-10-30s that were in their fleet, replacing them with Airbus A330-200s. Thomas Cook Airlines still operates some of the newer A320s that were delivered to Caledonian shortly before their takeover by the JMC group.
Stewardesses .....
Thanks Goose. Did Cal Air have anything to do with BCal at all or was it a whole new different airline? They did operate 3 of BCal's DC10's, one of which has now been converted into an eye hospital for Orbis.
Cal Air became the charter arm of British Airways if i recall....You are in fact correct they did operate 3 of BCal's DC-10s
Like the pic above and i would def say that they had some of the best cabin crew...miss those uniforms