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Aviation History
1968
1968 - 0611.PDF
International, 18 April 1968 589 Airline Profile NUMBER THIRTY-FOUR IN THE SERIES BRITISH Back to Nassau, six years after BOAC took over the Cunard Eagle routes: a British Eagle 707 on a pre-inaugural inclusive tour flight in February. The independent is 20 this week "Flight" photograph M ANY, IT SEEMS, WERE THEY who were called immediatelyafter the war to the vocation of attempting to run anindependent airline—and few who were finally chosen. Among the few was Mr Harold Bamberg, who launched himself into the Berlin airlift at the age of 25, and is now chairman of British Eagle International Airlines, a direct descendant of the company he founded then. Along most of the way since those early post-war days the story of the airline has been closely bound up with the man who started it, set it on the road, and at one time nearly lost it altogether, and gradually built it into the concern that it is today, the main constituent of the British Eagle group of companies, and one of Britain's two biggest independents. Hie original company, formed by Mr Bamberg with a nominal capital of £100 on April 14, 1948, was known as Eagle Aviation Ltd. In that year the Berlin airlift began, and provided an opportunity for all those who could muster a transport aircraft of some sort. Eagle stepped in with a converted Halifax 8, G-ALEF, and with that and two other Halifax 8s the company served the besieged city until the political situation improved in May 1949 and the airlift ceased. The honeymoon was now abruptly ended, and every penny of surplus from the Berlin operation was needed to start the company along the slippery path of post-war commercial air transport. The socialist Government in Britain that year put Paid, with its Air Corporations Act 1949, to any hopes that Private enterprise airlines would be able to bid for a worth- while slice of the aviation cake; the act, in its Section 24, gave the right of running scheduled services to the nationalised corporations. Little daunted, Mr Bamberg set about building a fleet suitable tor charter operations, and he introduced five Yorks into service. These aircraft were operated for the next three years,a Period when the company underwent no spectacular develop- "*«, but occupied itself with whatever charter work and oping jt could find. In 1952 there was a slight improvement "' we independents' lot; the new Conservative Government J^de a nervous concession to the notion of free enterprise, suh M.'owe<^ Private airlines to apply for permission to operate osidiary scheduled routes lying outside the sphere of activity BOAC and BEA. W^f resP°nded to this by inaugurating, in June 1953, a wsduled service from London to Belgrade. The York fleet • s rePtaced with one composed of Vikings, ten of which were operation on scheduled and charter services by 1955. The and r Service was followed by one from London to Aalborg who r henbUrg' A measure oi tne Problems awaiting those ^ t i i P g give k t0 open up new scheduled services at that time is load f the fact that in the fim half year of operation, Eagle's sen *actor on these routes was 18.6 per cent; only 357 pas- miies J*ere carried on a route mileage of just over 66,000 i ^ WaS SOme ^mProvement in 1964> but tne^ PWere f me a seasonal one. A number of holiday routes hf6'* Up at tn*s time'' th^ served such places as Dinard, La Baule, Pisa, Rimini and Luxembourg. The next few years were ones of patient perseverance, during which Mr Bamberg nurtured carefully his airline's development. By 1957 he had turned his attention to the West Indies and Caribbean area, and in that year Eagle Airways (Bermuda) Ltd was formed by Mr Bamberg and his legal adviser, Mr N. A. Hill. This company started up scheduled flights between Bermuda and New York, using a Viscount 800. BOAC was already on this route, but as a result of Eagle's appearance the British share of the total traffic increased. An expansien of Western operations ensued, and within a year Eagle had taken into its network not only New York, but also Montreal, Balti- more and Washington; at the other end, the Bahamas had been added. Flight described the formation of the Bermudan company as "a gamble—perhaps Mr Bamberg's boldest." A small airline was splitting itself in two, and the two parts were to be based some 3,000 miles apart. The danger lay in the dilution of the company's resources in the face of competition, in the western area, from not only BOAC, but Eastern and Pan American as well. But Mr Bamberg felt that he had to find some way to break out of the straitjacket in which the British Government's control had placed him, and the Caribbean area, with its British colonial associations and the already existing—and growing—holiday traffic from the USA and Canada, seemed to offer the opportunity he was looking for. In March 1960 there was a turn of events that was to prove fateful for Eagle; the Cunard Steam Ship Company, worried about increasing competition from air transport on the Trans- atlantic routes, and looking for diversification, acquired the Eagle group of companies. By this time the Eagle Viscounts were making an impact on the market, benefiting to a degree from the propeller discount fares. Now there was added impetus from the fact that the airline, now called Cunard Eagle, could benefit by a name already well-known to Americans, and by the old-established US sales organisation of Cunard. Under the reorganisation, the Eagle companies were grouped under Cunard Eagle (Holdings) Ltd, a company with a capital of £2 million. The chairman was Sir John Brocklebank, and on the board were Mr Bamberg, Mr Hill and two Cunard directors. The infusion of Cunard capital now opened the possibility of buying jet equipment, and towards the end of 1960 an order was placed with Boeing for two 707s to be delivered in 1962. An application was put to the newly formed Air Transport Licensing Board for permission to operate scheduled Trans- atlantic services on the London-New York route. The ATLB granted the application, finding that the traffic on the route warranted two British carriers; but, on appeal by BOAC, the decision was reversed. This decision, coming as it did when the delivery of the first 707 was imminent, created a difficult situation for Cunard Eagle, which might have been forced into cancelling the air- craft for want of suitable employment to which to put it. The solution was found ultimately by placing the first jet on the Bahamas register in the name of Cunard Eagle (Bahamas) Ltd, which already held a licence for Bermuda-London and
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