British Caledonian Schedule, 1977

A few pages from the timetable of British Caledonian Airways in 1977, demonstrating the breadth of its reach at the height of its operations, reaching on its own metal to Banjul while codesharing extensively with Air Afrique, Air France, and UTA Overseas French Airlines to Abidjan, Abu Dhabi, Bangui, and Baghdad with other connections to Bangkok and Bahrain on other carriers such as Singapore, KLM, Qantas, Gulf Air, and Thai Airways. The flight to Barbados is a rare bit of history: IQ2/IQ4 was a Martinair Holland DC-10 flying for the old Caribbean Airlines. 

Interspersed vintage black-and-white sketches give a flavor of the High Classic Jet Age, while an in-page advert feature's the airlines cargo operations. 

British Caledonian: The Intercontinental Routes, 1977 Detail # 2: South American Services

Long-haul operations British Caledonian concerned both Africa and South America. Services to both continents are grouped regionally-- a non-stop flight to Caracas also links Lima and Bogota. Service to Brazil, Argentina and Chile is routed via either Recife or Rio de Janeiro.

Other than the previously-posted non-stop from Gatwick to Recife, service to Brazil and the rest of the cone also stops in either Lisbon or Madrid before crossing the Atlantic, catching critical cultural, political and economic connections between the Iberian peninsula and its erstwhile colonies across Latin America.

See the previous post for discussion of the routes to Africa on the map. Thank you to the fantastic Airline Memorabilia blog for the privileges of reposting.

British Caledonian: The Intercontinental Routes, 1977

Reprinted with kind permission from the wonderful Airline Memorabilia blog is the inside jacket cover of a British Caledonian timetable, showing the airline's intercontinental services at the height of the airline's reach.

A dozen routes shower out from London (Gatwick) to South America and Africa, with service across the Canary Islands and North Africa.

In West Africa, Dakar, Banjul, Freetown and Monrovia (previously posted on Timetablist) are interwoven, with the cooperative operations of Sierra Leone Airways from Gatwick to Robertsfield via Lungi also shown. Accra, Lagos and Kano form another subgroup.

Central and Southern Africa are only sparsely served in a triangulated service linking Kinshasa and Lusaka, with a connecting service to the Zambian copperbelt capital of Ndola. Presumably, British Airways had rights that dominated East and Southern Africa, from Kenya to yet-to-be independent Rhodesia.

The next post will cover the South American services of the same map. Thanks again to Airline Memorabilia for the privileges.

British Caledonian: Gatwick-Banjul-Monrovia, April 1982

More of Banjul: this might not look particularly relevant, but this is in fact the dinner menu on the Gatwick-Banjul-Monrovia flight from the evening of 10 April 1982. With typical BCal thoroughness, the folder including routing and aircraft information; sadly this is particular paper is not part of Timetablist's core collection, so further elaboration is not available here. It does however stand as an important document proving two of Timetablist's favorite topics: the erstwhile prominence of Robertsfield among European carriers, and the last few posts' celebrations of the similarly past glory of Banjul's international connections.

British Caledonian: London (Gatwick)-Recife

British Caledonian had an interesting history, as evidence by its lengthy, detailed Wikipedia entry. It had to contend with its giant rival BOAC/British Airways (and by extension, the UK government, both its regulator and major BA shareholder) for route rights; a similar sort of competition can be seen more recently with BMI's ventures in Saudi Arabia and Sierra Leone, Azerbaijan and Asmara. BR itself was absorbed into the BA behemoth in the 1980s.

This handsome graphical first day cover celebrates a Gatwick-Recife service, a DC-10-30 plunging southward in 1977 (curious to know how long this lasted).

This is but one example of how British Caledonian lifted the celebratory first flight cover to new heights of art form and informational presentation. There's no way Timetablist can compete with the substantial and beautifully-presented British Caledonian Tribute site's FCC page, which shows the airline spent 1977 using its new DC-10s to extend to Sao Paulo, Santiago, Houston, Los Angeles, Lagos, and Algiers.