BCAL TIMETABLE DATE MARCH 18, 1979

40 years ago, BCal issued this timetable valid until July 30,1979

from the collection of Bjorn Larsson @ www.timetableimages.com

FEW WORDS ABOUT BCal 

(from Wikipedia)



The company is the result of the merger between British United, the largest private independent airline in the UK with the 2nd largest charter airline company Caledonian Airways. The merger occurred on November 30, 1970, when the smaller charter company acquired the biggest but financially troubled airline.

In 1967, The  Edwards Committee was formed in 1967 to look at the future of British aviation and its finding  British Air Transport in the Seventies was published in May 1969. Among its recommendations was the creation of second force, a private carrier to compete and counterbalance  BEA and BOAC (state-owned companies) might which provided for 90% of all UK scheduled air transport capacity at the beginning of the decade. This private airline would get preference to be the second licensed British operator on a given route as the government rejected the proposed transfer of routes from BOAC and BEA to the Second Force, and held that dual designation on a route should be open to any British independent. Two British independents were specifically mentioned:  Caledonian and BUA

The new airline established its headquarters and operational base at Gatwick Airport.

At the time of the merger, BCal inherited from its predecessors 31 jet aircraft: 11 long-haul aircraft (seven ex-Caledonian Boeing 707s and four ex-BUA Vickers VC10) and 20 short-haul planes (eight ex-BUA and four ex-Caledonian BAC One-Eleven 500s and eight ex-BUA BAC One-Eleven 200s).

The "Second Force" inherited BUA's extensive network of scheduled routes serving the British Isles, Continental Europe, Africa and South America Its scheduled ambitions were aided by the British Government transferring to it BOAC's West African trunk routes to Nigeria and Ghana as well as the corporation's North African route to Libya. These routes represented only 3% of BOAC's annual, worldwide turnover. The Government also agreed to let it serve Casablanca from Gatwick in competition with BEA's service from Heathrow.

 NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICAN SERVICES

The airline inaugurated Its Gatwick - Houston service 1n 1977 (April 1977) and provided the oil industry with links between Houston  and  Lagos in addition to Tripoli

The South American destinations of Bogota, Lima, Guayaquil and Caracas were re-allocated from British Aiways.

Flights were operated by 265 seat DC10-30 and B707-320

NORTH - WEST-SOUTH AFRICA SERVICES
 

The African network of the company was served by both the 707 and dc10. After the loss of its East African network  following he Government's new "spheres of influence" aviation policy confined BCal's long-haul scheduled operations to two continents — Africa and South America.^] The loss of BCal's East African routes enabled the airline to replace the one-stop scheduled service via Nairobi to Lusaka with non-stop flights.
Casablanca-Gatwick service was competing with BEA and Royal Air Maroc services to Heathrow and Benghazi was added in 1978


 EUROPEAN NETWORK

 

BCal was competing with BEA and Air France on the Paris-London route albeit from 2 different Airports Gatwick-Le Bourget for BCal and Heathrow -Orly for BEA and Air France  but it became the first scheduled carrier to operate between London and the new Paris airport in 1974

To reduce operating costs further after the oil crisis of 1973/74  the airline decided to contract out its scheduled operations between Gatwick and Le Touquet to BIA. The reason for replacing BCal's One-Eleven 200 jet aircraft on this route with that airline's Herald turboprops was the high price of jet fuel, which had made BCal's own jet aircraft operations uneconomic. 

Most of the European services were operated by the BAC111-500 and BAC111-200



DOMESTIC SERVICES

From the table above, we can notice the  Airlink, a high-frequency helicopter shuttle service linking both of London's main airports. The new helicopter shuttle service linking London Heathrow and London Gatwick was inaugurated on 9 June 1978 using a 28-seater Sikorsky S-61N helicopter
The service gave BCal's passengers easier access to flight connections at Heathrow, especially to destinations not served by scheduled flights from Gatwick at the time.

The services between Gatwick and Birmingham operated by the Piper Navajo Chieftain was aimed exclusively to the executive market

CARGO SERVICES

FLEET

The fleet of the airline consisted of a mix of Boeing 707 (8). The B707 was named:  County of Inverness, Loch Invar (renamed from flagship Bonnie Scotland), County of Fife, Caithness, 



By Michel Gilliand - Gallery page http://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Caledonian-Airways/Boeing-707-355C/0776293/L Photo http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/3/9/2/0776293.jpg, GFDL 1.2, Link






3 Douglas DC10-30 :
Sir Alexander Fleming, Robert Burns, and David Livingstone


By Michel Gilliand - Gallery page http://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Caledonian-Airways/McDonnell-Douglas-DC-10-30/0792364/L Photo http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/4/6/3/0792364.jpg, GFDL 1.2, Link



7 BAC111-200 named Burgh of Fort William, City of Glasgow, City of Dundee, Burgh of Paisley, Burgh of Nairn, Burgh of Dumferline, Burgh of Hawick



By Michel Gilliand - Gallery page http://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Caledonian-Airways/BAC-111-201AC-One-Eleven/0818616/L Photo http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/6/1/6/0818616.jpg, GFDL 1.2, Link

and 9 BAC111-500 which were christened the Isle of Bute, Isle of Barra, Isle of Colonsay, Flagship Isle Of Skye, Isle of Staffa, Isle of Arran, Isle of Eriskay, Isle of Islay and Isle of Harris



By Michel Gilliand - Gallery page http://www.airliners.net/photo/British-Caledonian-Airways/BAC-111-501EX-One-Eleven/0938393/L Photo http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/photos/3/9/3/0938393.jpg, GFDL 1.2, Link



A Sikorsky S61N 


By Ken Fielding/https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenfielding, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link



A and 2 Piper PA-31 Navajo  (G-CLAN, G-SCOT)

By Ken Fielding/https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenfielding, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link