Freddie Laker

Was Gerry Marshall involved?

Not wishing to side track too much, but he was the competition end of the business and sponsored by Vauxhall rather than employed.

Mark

Was Gerry Marshall involved?

Ooooh, you know how to live . . .

Melv,

It was dark and lonely work…but sometimes it was the ‘droop snoot’ Firenza.

Mark

and one experimental ‘Viva’

Mark

Ooooh, you know how to live . . .

Carvair – Southend – Ostende – return.

I remember getting a terrible ‘rocket’ from my then employer, GM, back in December 1974, for using the ‘expensive luxury’ of the return services of the Carvair ‘Fat Annie’ to transport myself, a fellow engineer and one experimental ‘Viva’ vehicle from Luton to the tyre testing proving ground of the supplier at Luxembourg. Goodyear from memory.

Of course the chance to fly in a piston engined airliner was incidental ;), an analysis of the costing soon revealed that reducing this usual two day leg down to one day, thus saving two engineers overnight stop at Bruges/Brussels and two days wages was indeed a cost saving.

Indeed on the return journey, with all of 1256cc of engine capacity, on hard packed fresh snow, true, with a lucky connection at Ostende, I started at 08.00 in the morning and was back in Luton before the end of the day’s play.

Apart from the fact that some of the other engineers rather liked their ‘chips with mayonnaise’ overnight in Bruges, shortly after, I recall, they terminated the service.

Mark

A brainchild of Sir Freddie that never left the ground: the Carvair 7. Based on a DC-6, powered by RR Darts.

Tillerman.

Photo of British United Airways G-ANYB, the first ATL-98 Carvair, photographer Alan Brown. I presume the Carvair 7 would be a conversion of the DC-7 not DC-6? :confused:

A brainchild of Sir Freddie that never left the ground: the Carvair 7. Based on a DC-6, powered by RR Darts. It would have been a great sight to see this fly…
Scanned from an old PR picture, photographer unknown to me.

Tillerman.

The true prototype of the low cost scheduled carrier is Southwest Airlines of Texas. They began operating in 1973 (Laker began operations as a regular scheduled airline and charter operator in 1966 – his low cost operations began in 1973 but due to all the restrictions put in place, he wasn’t really able to operate the way he wanted to until 1977).

I flew with Laker twice, once to Miami in ’80 and then to LAX in ’81, we were due to fly to DFW in ’82 but then Laker went bust, so we re-booked with Braniff, (Big Orange!) and they went bust, so we flew American Airlines.

We think of these no-frills budget airlines as a new phenomenom, but most of it can be traced back to the likes of Freddie Laker, Jack Jones and others competing out of Southend and Lydd in the ’50s & ’60s with seat pitches to make you wince!

Not forgetting the likes of Dan Air and Courtline of course!

This week, I feel compelled to mention the recent passing of Sir Freddie Laker, a British entrepreneur who was one of the true pioneers of budget travel.

In 1977, Laker introduced $100 one-way airfares between New York and London, shocking the major carriers on the route (British Airways, Pan Am and TWA) and starting an international fare war. He called the service Skytrain, packing seats as close as humanly possible on his DC-10s and eliminating every frill in order to cut overhead to the bone. If you wanted to eat on the 7-hour flight, you could buy a sandwich from the cart when it came down the aisle.

There were no advance reservations or advance seat assignments, and in fact there was no reservations system at all. Tickets were purchased in person at the ticket office in New York or London, on the day of departure. In New York in the summertime, the line started forming before dawn each day, and tickets were sold on a first-come, first-served basis until they were gone. Those with tickets had a few hours to make it out to JFK for the flight. Those without were advised to try again the next day.

Skytrain flourished at first but expanded too rapidly into a global recession and collapsed in 1982, charging its larger competitors with predatory practices. In those 5 years, hundreds of thousands of people crossed the Atlantic who could not have afforded it otherwise.

In August of 1978, I was one of those people, a college student on my first trip out of the country. After a short visit to London and Paris, I prepared to return home and found myself in one of the most notorious traffic jams in aviation history.

By that time, Laker’s reputation among college students was golden, and many who had spent the summer backpacking in Europe began to congregate in London for a Skytrain flight back to the U.S. Each day there was a surplus of people waiting to buy tickets, most very low on cash and few with any other options for getting back to the states.

After tickets for that day’s flight were distributed, the surplus of would-be passengers carried over to the next day, and the line grew longer and longer. Eventually the line at the ticket office grew so long that the back half had to be relocated to the banks of the Thames River, where a “Tent City” of mostly college students queued up and an elaborate system for keeping track of one’s place in line developed.

By the time I arrived in Tent City to sign up for a place in line, there were more than 1,000 “residents,” enough to fill 3-4 days of flights. I was assigned to a tent with a number of others and had to take a shift each day watching out for our collective interests and belongings, but was otherwise free to roam. Each day about 350 people from the front of the line purchased tickets and flew out, lists were revised in an orderly fashion, and then we’d scatter to make the most of another unscheduled day in London.

The British Press dubbed us “terminal children” and referred to Tent City as Lakerville. A report by Peter Jennings put our makeshift community on the ABC Evening News, and I could almost hear my parents at home saying, “Ah, so that’s where he is!”

It was a bit tense at the time not knowing exactly when I would be leaving–and whether I might starve in the meantime–but I look back on that now as just another amazing aspect of my first international vacation. All courtesy of a man who challenged the status quo and expanded access to international air travel far beyond the well-to-do.

So thank you, Sir Freddie, from all of us who could not have traveled otherwise.

I thought this would be a fitting tribute written by an American, and an interesting insight for the benefit of the younger members of the forum.

This one?

I have loads more from the 60’s and early 70’s (not just VC10’s), but I just don’t know about copyrights…

Tillerman.

A good photo to post as a tribute would be the VC10 taxiing at Farnborough with freight door open and Rolls-Royce in view. I don’t have it online though, don’t know if anyone else has.

RIP.

G-ORDY – I remember that article (I still have the original mag’ in the loft somewhere). From memory, I recall that Laker launched the “Skytrain” service in 1973 but that due to obstructive behaviour by various airlines and governments, the full “Skytrain” service didn’t really get going until 1977.

:confused:

22 June 1974 : DC-10 : G-BBSZ : Gatwick-Toronto Int. : Laker : 7hrs 05mins

Mark

G-ORDY – I remember that article (I still have the original mag’ in the loft somewhere). From memory, I recall that Laker launched the “Skytrain” service in 1973 but that due to obstructive behaviour by various airlines and governments, the full “Skytrain” service didn’t really get going until 1977.

Despite the BBC Radio Five Live news saying he started flying to New York in 1977 I flew Skytrain to New York in 1974!

I was working for Aviation News at the time, I wrote up the trip at the time as my wife and I visited many museums on that trip (August 1974 was hot at Harlingen!)

On the return flight we flew back from New York to Gatwick in the cockpit with the flight crew … Happy Days.

Freddie Laker

Nice if someone could post some pic’s of one or two of the numerous Handley-Page Halifaxes that he purchased post-war & kick-started his career with.

I do believe that Virgin Atlantic has/had a 747 named “Spirit of Sir Freddie”. That tells you something about his legacy.

The only thing that sticks in my mind was how Maggie stitched him up.

“I had 29 airlines ganged up against me…You can say what you like about Margaret Thatcher, but I was her icon when she was talking about competition. ‘Look at Laker Airways, competition pays,’ she would say. But of course as soon as the heat was put on, she got me kicked out.”

Shame he could not make it work at the time.

R.I.P. Sir Freddie.

Brian.

Sad sad news,

Aviation Traders founder the man behind the carvair & Accountant.

The Prentices were mostly scrapped, but I beleve two flew in many many stages to OZ I know the first deffo did.

Anyone with pics/memories?

My main memory is the dozens and dozens of Prentices he bought at one stage.

Whatever became of them?

RIP Mr Laker

Moggy