Trying to figure out what my first flight was recently and all I know is it was a flight to Bulgaria from Manchester in around 1981. I believe the airline was the old Balkan Airlines. If my assumptions are correct, does anyone know what aircraft Balkan airlines were flying into Manchester in 1981 and are there any historic pictures hanging around?
Thanks in advance folks.
By: MSR777 - 8th October 2008 at 20:04
At that time Balkan Bulgarian were using the Tu134A, Tu154B and also the Ilyushin IL18 on IT services from the UK. I was a Traffic Officer/Load Controller at Stansted then, and we used to see all of these on services to both Bourgas and Varna in the summer and ski flight services to Sofia in the winter season. The type was always determined by the booked loads at the time. Sometimes we would only have confirmation of the type we were going to get when the departure signal from Sofia operations came through, which would only gave us around 3 hours to match the load planning to the aircraft type that was coming. I used to look foreward to the apple juice that the cabin chief always offered to us on the turnround:)
By: chester - 8th October 2008 at 12:13
I flew with them in 1980 from Manchester to varna and they used a Tu 154
and it was always parked at the furthest gate at the end of T1.
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October 8, 2008 at 8:14 am