RE: MD11

Strangely enough I have spent today flying with the former Senior Training Captain from the BCal DC10 fleet and asked him about this. This is his response –

After the Falklands War there was a lot of difficulty gaining access around South America. BCal were the dominant UK operator in that region but the government wanted to be able to improve links with the region (due to the political situation) so thought it would be better to reallocate route licenses and send BA,the flag carrier(!) instead. So BCal started to operate more to the Middle East and BA to South America. This wasn’t the move that BCal wanted but they were forced by the government. When oil prices started to rise BCal started to struggle and looked at selling a 40% stake to SAS. Lord King managed to block this move which left BCal desperate, until BA (having weakened them to breaking point) bought them themselves and absorbed it into BA. At this time BA had British Airtours as its charter arm but they wanted to disassociate themselves from charter and were concerned about a new charter operation on the horizon named Airtours (now MyTravel) so they got rid of their charter operation. A while later they started up Caledonian Airways with their remaining charter rights which they quickly sold on to Inspirations. The rest we all know…