culture of the parent company and resigned.
In February 1963, Mr Bamberg and his
associates purchased 60% of Cunard’s
holding in Eagle. He decided to rebuild
the airline, and subsequently bought the
remaining 40% shareholding. On August9, 1963, the carrier was rebranded British
Eagle International Airlines.
After a number of hearings with the
ATLB, it was eventually given permission to
begin operating routes in late 1963 between
Heathrow and Glasgow, Edinburgh and
Belfast on a once-daily basis. This was the rst time BEA had faced direct competition
from an independent on major trunk routes.
Finally, in November 1963, Eagle was
granted permission to operate full domestic
services. For these, it used Britannias,
ironically leased from BOAC, con gured with
14 rst and 87 tourist seats. But just as the
schedules were announced by Eagle, BEA
introduced a new timetable on the same
routes which effectively shadowed the British
Eagle rotations. Such was the determination
of the state carriers to ght the independents
that, for example, where the British Eagle
Heathrow departure for Edinburgh would
be scheduled for 3pm, there would be a
BEA ight at the same time and its return to
London would depart just 10 minutes after
that of British Eagle.STARWAY TO HEATHROW
On the last day of 1963, British Eagle
took over a little-known privately owned
airline called Starways, based in Liverpool.
Starways already operated scheduled
services from Liverpool to Heathrow and
Glasgow, plus several inclusive tour (IT)
routes to destinations in southern Europe,
as well as Ostend, Belgium and Dinard in
France. Its eet consisted of three Douglas
DC-4s and three DC-3s, but these were
soon disposed of and replaced by Vickers
Viscount 700 series leased from Channel
Airways. These new routes allowed British
Eagle to strengthen its grip on the UK internal
travel market. More Viscounts were acquired,
and those which had operated between
Bermuda and the Bahamas were returned
to the UK and put on the British register. A
maintenance base for the Viscounts was
opened at Liverpool.
Meanwhile, Bamberg had purchased
more Britannias and these were being
used in both passenger and freighter
con gurations on regular routes to Australia.
In the mid-1960s, Australia was encouraging
British migrants on an assisted passage
scheme, whereby once the formalities had
been completed and their applications
accepted, the would-be settlers paid just
£10 to y to Australia. Known colloquially as
‘£10 Poms’, many of them were carried by
Eagle under contract to Qantas. Meanwhile,80 Aviation News incorporating Jets August 2018A Handley Page Halifax operated by Air Freight, became part of Eagle Aviation in 1948.
Key CollectionInside the British Eagle International maintenance hangar at Heathrow. Key CollectionA very rare photograph of Douglas DC-6 G-APOM in ight.78-82_eagleDC.mfDC.mfDC.mf.indd 80 06/07/2018 12:00