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Aviation History
1967
1967 - 0909.PDF
FLIGHT International, I June 1967 887 Liverpool-Manchester-Frankfurt service is planned to begin on June 12 and British Eagle believes that the One-Eleven isthe only aircraft for this operation which has been deliberately delayed until the jet can be made available for it. Thirty-three inclusive tour destinations will be served by One-Eleven from London this summer and the longer range of the 300 series will also enable many inclusive-tour flights to originate in the growing markets of midland and northern provincial centres—continental European holiday traffic is developing rapidly from the provinces—thus enabling pas- sengers to avoid having to route through London. New scheduled routes being added this year are Birmingham to Palma; Liverpool to Pisa and Rimini; and Manchester to Pisa and Rimini. Specially formed last year by Mr Bamberg to co-ordinate and strengthen the holiday business is the Travel Trust— Britain's largest private travel organisation—incorporating the well-known names of Lunn, Poly, and Everyman, which to- gether cater for the complete range of IT promotions. All flights in the 1967 Poly brochures are by One-Eleven. Major holiday contracts are also held with Cosmos, Global and Cooks. British Eagle is installing a new ICT 1901 computer later this year in its Feltham, Middlesex, offices for wide-scale use in the airline; it will be shared by the Travel Trust The greatly increased advertising and promotional support programme behind British Eagle's One-Eleven operation has been the responsibility of Mr Nigel Thompson (general manager, public relations) and Mr James Eadie (advertising manager) in conjunction with the airline's advertising agents, Gibson, Gilbert, White Ltd, led by Arthur Gibson, joint managing director and for many years a leading exponent of aviation marketing promotion. The publicity has featured speed, jet travel, the well-known Eagle symbol, a new house- style lettering and the twin themes—"British Eagle takes you under its wing" and "British Eagle is going places—jetwise." Almost all press advertisements have been "hard sell" on the particular service being promoted. Promotional schemes have also been pursued with a number of consumer product lines, and a film entitled Lets Go Superjet has been made about the Tunis/Djerba service. Mr Bob Duffett (sales manager, scheduled services) said: "Without question the One-Eleven got British Eagle back into the first division of air carriers. The name 'Superjet' was coined and we majored on it relative to our advertising campaign. The One-Eleven became a symbol of first-quality air trans- portation, both domestic and European, and the front runner of our operation." The One-Eleven had, he added, "unquestion- ably resulted in a most dramatic effect on those routes we put it on. It has brought an entirely new concept of travel as far as short-haul is concerned. It has also brought a significant improvement to the holidaymaker. Now it provides front-line service on both our scheduled and inclusive-tour flights with standards of comfort hitherto the exclusive prerogative of the long-haul passenger. "The two entrances and integral stairways make a marked difference to ground time, especially at out-stations. The auxiliary unit enables us to use such sparsely equipped places as Perpignan and Djerba. We don't, therefore, need any assistance from anything on the ground. At Glasgow it means that in the freezing cold of winter you get into a warm cabin. At Djerba in the tropical heat you get into a cool cabin. On a transit stop you can stay in the aircraft without getting cooked. "In 1963 we began to operate the London - Glasgow route with 87-seat Britannia 300s with 2x2 first-class seating and a full first-class meal service, but we achieved only limited success. When we introduced the 79-seat, all-tourist One-Eleven with 12 flights weekly on the route, five months after BUA, we achieved an equal share of the traffic—relative to frequency —after only six weeks." Commuter Arrangements At Heathrow British Eagle has a fleet of 17 express coaches in support of its UK business commuter services, operating directly from the apron to the airline's London, Knightsbridge Air Terminal in only 45 minutes' journey time. At check-in at Glasgow the passenger specifies either "Airport" or "Knights- bridge" when buying his ticket and his baggage is labelled appropriately. At Heathrow the passengers and their baggage are loaded simultaneously on one coach. British Eagle was first to introduce these direct coaches, having previously used the normal bus and baggage trucks to transport passengers and baggage to the airport buildings, both then being trans- ferred to another bus for the town terminal. In 1964 British Eagle began a regular scheduled Viscount service to Stuttgart direct from the UK. Several months later Lufthansa came on the route and took a lot of traffic—getting about three passengers to British Eagle's one. Both airlines introduced jets in May last year, Lufthansa the Boeing 727 and British Eagle the One-Eleven. Passenger ratio is only two to one, and the Stuttgart service is building up slowly but surely. Lufthansa withdrew its direct Boeing 727 service last month and British Eagle expect to gain considerably during the coming summer. The weekly Tunis and Djerba service, begun last May, was a new route to a relatively unknown area. By July it was increased to two frequencies weekly. Results have shown an overall 45 per cent load factor since the service was started. "On this long sector the One-Eleven has proved to be ideal One-Elevens are used by Eagle for scheduled services to Tunis and Djerba, Tunisia, where G-ATPJ is seen here
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