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Aviation History
1972
1972 - 1973.PDF
BRITISH CALEDONIAN i ... , '•••'•* .7?**•*»-:'* •:! if'V' Seen at Gatwick shortly before the merger, British Caledonian's two antecedent airlines, Caledonian Airways and British United Airways. The types (VCIO, background, One-Eleven 200, below left, and One-Eleven 500) represent, with the Boeing 707 (pictured on this week's front cover) the current BCAL fleet .*">*.-««£•»•,„,.*» image, but the big lion and tartan-clad girls are used prominently to emphasise BCAL's different personality. A New York office is being opened on the corner of Madison Avenue and 48th Street in October. Launching cost of the North Atlantic service will be £1 million, of which £400,000 will be spent on advertising and publicity. BCAL is budgeting to lose money on this route for the first two years, to turn the corner towards the end of the third year, and to make a profit—including enough to wipe out the losses of the first three years—by the fifth. The airline is having no second thoughts whatso ever about this route. A scheduled service is still the soundest base for a total air transport operation, in BCAL's view. Are there not enough carriers on the North Atlantic already? And isn't the lesson of Pan American a little chastening? British Caledonian directors think that Pan American's turn-round could be as strong as TWA's was. They don't see the slump lasting. "We are not doing the North Atlantic with our eyes closed," says one director with long experience of the North Atlantic market. "We are not babes on this route. We have been on it for ten years—during the last five in a very big way." The former Caledonian Airways first applied for North Atlantic scheduled services in 1964, re-applied in 1968, and (as BCAL) was finally granted a licence in 1972. As a charter operator British Caledonian feels vulnerable to the part-charter trend, i.e. to the concept of charter groups carried on scheduled services. A lot of the growth, they believe, will be on scheduled services in future; and who, they argue, is in a better position to take advantage of bulk transport than BCAL? "We know all the sources of the business," says a director. "We agree that scheduled services are in a different ball game, but we have costed it all out and we have a long history of scheduled services in Africa, Europe and South America." British Caledonian's chairman, Mr Adam Thomson, does not feel schizophrenic about being a half-scheduled, half- charter airline. "We have never seen any problem in reconciling the two types of operation. Some routes need one, some the other, some both. So why not an airline with a brand name in one market as well as in another? The operator, who describes himself as a scheduled operator is cutting himself off from a lot of business. There is a place for whole charters, for blocked-off scheduled services, and for whole scheduled services." He admits that in the last two years the charter operators have been making heavy inroads into scheduled revenue. "The diffi culty today is to find out who isn't discounting," he says. As an lata member, British Caledonian's view is that the next lata fares conference, which takes place in Torremolinos in September, must come up with some form of low group fares. But Thomson anticipates a conflict, especially from some scheduled airlines whose traffic is going up and who may want to keep the existing high fares. Scheduled traffic on the North Atlantic this year, he estimates, is more than 25 per cent up on last year. His impression is that BOAC is satisfied with results. Thomson says that no decision has been made within the airline, where opinions differ, on wide-body equipment. The first move will be to give five of the Boeing 707-320Cs the "wide-bodied look," possibly under the name Chieftain Class, with two-by-two seating in triple chairs each having a folding-down centre (and usable as triples on charter flights). Would it not be cheaper to remodel all existing narrow- bodied aircraft? Are wide bodies really necessary? "Wide- bodied aircraft will undoubtedly give a better return," says Thomson. "The only way we are going to take full advantage of the charter/scheduled mix is to have wide- body aircraft. We could offer a higher standard of service on the 707 than on the 747, but it will get harder and harder to sell narrow bodies in the long term." The 707-320C is still a very marketable aeroplane ("try buying one," says Thomson). British Caledonian would like to use the VC10, which would differentiate the airline from many of its competitors; but this aircraft has not got London-Los Angeles range. In Thomson's view the 747 might be the most suitable aircraft for London-New York and London-Los Angeles. Second-hand 747s are available, if needed, next year. But in his view a trijet might be easier to introduce on European and domestic routes. "We have a wide spread of requirements, from 6,000 miles to 300 miles range, and for big and small aircraft," says Thomson. "We want two types at the most and one as the optimum." Caledonian performance experts agree with Lockheed's concept of the TriStar Dash 2, with the uprated RB.211, as a "knot-hole" aeroplane, capable of operating ranges of up to 4,000 n.m. more economically than any DC-10 variant. While the DC-10-10 could do London-Chicago non stop with an increased all-up weight, and McDonnell Douglas is in fact now flying a 440,0001b DC-10-10, in British Caledonian's view the TriStar Dash 2 would have a lower operating cost than the DC-10-10 on the North Atlantic. A lot depends on whether British Airways buys the TriStar. The view of Caledonian's experts is that the 1011 is probably a more universal aircraft, but it is range- limited. Routes like Casablanca-Rio, Freetown-Buenos Aires and Entebbe-London are either marginal or impossible even with the TriStar Dash 2. "But for our other range requirements we do not rule out the standard TriStar, or the Dash 2 version if it is built," says one executive. The view of British Caledonian on its re-equipment
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