Nostalgia Thread

[Scottie Dog]

Could my memory be playing tricks?

I seem to recall as a 'late teenager' going on a tour of the southwest and paying a visit to Lulsgate.

I had written to the flying school requesting permission to visit their hangar (number crunching was my interest in those days) and received a kind reply suggesting that I phone from the terminal when I arrived.

So, on the agreed date, I parked outside the terminal in the free car park - who paid for parking in those days - and on entering the terminal I, as requested, found a telephone and made my call. "Yes they said it's fine to come and visit but we're on the far side of the airfield, do you have a car? Having confirmed that i did I was told to drive around the side of the apron and follow the taxiway, hold short of the runway to check for landing traffic, and then proceed to cross to the flying school".

So, is my memory playing tricks or could this really have been permitted in the late 1960s?

 

[superking]

In those days any thing that had to cross runway for what ever reason had to have a escort.A few times it had to cross runway to recover cars that had gone through hedge from the a38 and we had to go in main terminal to get escort sorted.Im not sure which section escorted us.

 

[Scottie Dog]

Thanks for that. It's strange how it sticks in my mind. I'm sure I remember that crossing if the active as I was so worried.

 

[Aviador]

In those days any thing that had to cross runway for what ever reason had to have a escort.A few times it had to cross runway to recover cars that had gone through hedge from the a38 and we had to go in main terminal to get escort sorted.Im not sure which section escorted us.

Back in those days it will have been anybody, the handyman, airfield ground lighting or the grass cutter.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

In those days any thing that had to cross runway for what ever reason had to have a escort.A few times it had to cross runway to recover cars that had gone through hedge from the a38 and we had to go in main terminal to get escort sorted.Im not sure which section escorted us.

Back in those days it will have been anybody, the handyman, airfield ground lighting or the grass cutter.

It was certainly much quieter in the 1960s in terms of commercial flights than it is today. The 60s ranged from 59,000 passengers per calendar year (1961) to 134,000 (1967) after which it tailed off to 120,000 in 1969. The airport sees around 30,000 on a busy summer's day in 2018.

The flying school and other small private aircraft would have been in evidence but to what degree I don't know. In the 1960s the Health and Safety industry was no more than a tiny Orwellian seed waiting to grow and grow in the then distant future.

 

[8mileshigh]

I'm not sure if this has been reported in the past but in the late 60s to early 70s there was a football pitch marked out with goal posts on the land where the silver zone car park now is. It was within the airport boundary and if I recall correctly was used on a Sunday morning by a local team. The players would arrive in cars and park on the ramp in the vicinity of the current stand 13. An escort would then take them to the pitch via the active runway and return them after the match. Sunday mornings where very quiet in those days.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I'm not sure if this has been reported in the past but in the late 60s to early 70s there was a football pitch marked out with goal posts on the land where the silver zone car park now is. It was within the airport boundary and if I recall correctly was used on a Sunday morning by a local team. The players would arrive in cars and park on the ramp in the vicinity of the current stand 13. An escort would then take them to the pitch via the active runway and return them after the match. Sunday mornings where very quiet in those days.

I don't think this has been mentioned before. I have a vague recollection of reading that the airport once had its own football team. Whether they did, and if they did, they played on the pitch you mention I don't know.

As a young child I lived at Wrngton before before moving to nearby Redhill where I lived until the early 1960s. I can't remember that pitch then but that's not to say it wasn't there in my time, although Sunday leagues didn't really begin to become popular until the later 60s so far as I can recall. I was playing in the late 50s/early 60s and there was no Sunday football in the area then.

Redhill itself never had a football team but Wrington did and play on the recreation ground in that village. Some 20-30 years ago Wrington FC became Wrington Redhill FC, which it still is, and for a short while there was a pitch in a field off Winters Lane on the Redhill side of the eastern end of Goblin Combe.

When RAF Lulsgate Bottom was decommissioned after WW2 the airfield was used for motor car racing in the late 1940s, utilising the metalled runways and taxiways. As a youngster my main recollection of the site before it became Bristol Airport was its use as a glider club.

In those days we used to be taken on 'nature' rambles from Redhill Junior School (sadly, closed down many years ago and now the site of one or two houses) up Winters Land, through the road gates that used to 'guard' the top entrance to the combe, and then along the old route of Winters Lane/Cooks Bridle Path which would take us right across the runway of the current airport.

 

[superking]

I worked in the garage at the top of redhill.A few times we played football against a airport team. The pitch we used was as you came into the airport from the A 38 it was on the right hand side.We never beat the airport team as every time a aircraft came in or took off then our team would stop to look at it where as the airport team kept playing.We didn't mind as they always supplied food and drink. Im sure most in our team went to look at aircraft and also the food and drink.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Was that a club in a league or a group of you playing informally as a team against the airport side? Was that Roberts Garage?

 

[superking]

Yes Roberts garage where I did my aprentiship. It was just 2 teams that could muster enough players for a game with who ever wanted a game.I forgot to say in my last post that every time our team stopped to aircraft watch the airport team always scored. Needless to say we never beat them.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Yes Roberts garage where I did my aprentiship. It was just 2 teams that could muster enough players for a game with who ever wanted a game.I forgot to say in my last post that every time our team stopped to aircraft watch the airport team always scored. Needless to say we never beat them.

It's a good job you're not playing these days with all the aircraft movements. If you stopped to watch each time now you'd be losing about 30-0.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

In 2007 the below article appeared in the Houston Chronicle, a US newspaper.

It concerns Continental Airlines' Bristol-Newark route that had begun in May 2005 and focuses on the airline's strategy of serving smaller European cities on thin routes. The lack of Continental's access to Heathrow is mentioned with such routes as BRS looked upon almost as a back door method (my words, not the article's) of gaining wider access to the UK - at the time Continental served London through Gatwick.

BRS's method of attracting Continental is touched on and, unsurprisingly, the tenor of the article presents an optimistic view of the operation and its future.

I downloaded the article at the time it was published but I can no longer find it online. Had I been able to do so I would have merely posted a link. So far as I know, the Houston Chronicle still holds the copyright but I hope that it will be considered acceptable to re-produce it here given its longevity and the relatively limited circle of readers.

It's certainly a bit of nostalgia in respect of BRS's only regular scheduled US service.

BRISTOL, ENGLAND - Bristol International is a small airport just outside this English city, but its facilities — and others like it throughout the United Kingdom and Europe — have provided an opportunity for Continental Airlines' recent growth.

Instead of concentrating solely on huge tourist draws like London, Paris and Rome, the Houston-based carrier has moved into midsize cities, establishing nonstop links between its Newark Liberty International Airport hub and places like Bristol, a growing business center with a population of about 500,000.

In the last three years, Continental has also added nonstop flights to Belfast in Northern Ireland and Edinburgh in Scotland as well as to new locations in Europe, including Barcelona, Spain; Stockholm, Sweden; and Cologne, Germany.

The strategy has given some European cities a first-ever nonstop link to the United States and has allowed Continental to expand its European presence greatly, despite its inability to get coveted landing rights at London's Heathrow Airport.

"These routes are very strong," said James Summerford, Continental's vice president for Europe, the Middle East and Asia. "We really are turning into an international carrier. We're getting near the point where 50 percent of our revenues are international. The expansion is going fabulously well."

Continental's international performance helped lift last year's third-quarter revenue and income and will contribute to what's expected to be a profitable year when the carrier reports fourth quarter and full year 2006 earnings today.

Summerford said the international expansion plan, hatched 10 years ago, depended on a $1.4 billion renovation of the airline's facilities at Newark airport, the gateway for most of the new routes. Executives believed then that the revamped terminal would give Continental a formidable launching pad for going global, he said.

"We have a structural advantage over other airlines that allows us to hit a lot of these secondary markets," he said. "First, we have the only hub in the New York City area, with Newark Liberty. Second, we have the right kind of aircraft for these small markets, the Boeing 757-200, with 172 seats. It's great for the thin market, and it's very economical to fly. That makes routes work for us that don't work for other airlines."

The airline's European network has grown from five cities 10 years ago to 26 cities today.

Howard Wheeldon, an airline specialist at BTC Partners brokerage in London, said Continental's strategy of moving into places like Bristol may pay off and offset the company's absence from London Heathrow.

"These places might not seem very big to most of us, but they are very important places for Continental," he said. "They're growing at an equally fast pace as larger airports like Heathrow. If they play their cards right and choose places wisely, I don't think it matters if they're not in the center of London."

The process for Bristol was started by Tony Hallwood, the aviation development director of Bristol International Airport. He convinced Continental executives that the pool of travelers who would use the airline for U.S. trips extended far beyond Bristol.

Hallwood, who was also courting American Airlines, argued that leisure travelers and business people from a large, affluent swath of southwest England would fly to Newark with Continental if they could leave from Bristol's airport and skip the tedious drive to Heathrow.

"When we met with people in Houston, we knew were on solid ground," Hallwood said. "We knew there were over 300,000 trips taken to the States each year by people flying out of London Heathrow who originate in the southwest here. We knew we could pull a lot of those customers back with direct service to the States."

Hallwood's argument was buttressed by the long list of international companies in the Bristol area, including those with trading ties to Houston, which would provide a large number of travelers willing to pay premium fares for Continental's BusinessFirst service.

Airport authorities also offered Continental incentives to begin service, including an agreement to suspend landing fees for the first three years.

The addition of Bristol-Newark service also allows travelers to avoid the hassle of dealing with Heathrow, an aging, overcrowded facility where travel is frequently slowed by long security lines and by foul weather.

James Cowling, business editor at the Bristol Evening Post, said the addition of the Newark nonstop provided a major shot in the arm for the Bristol business community and brought some U.S. tourists into the region.

"There is so much potential for growth on the back of the Continental flight," he said. "The business community was delighted because it cuts time at both ends; they don't have to drive to and from Heathrow, that saves 2 1/2 hours each way."

Similar logic applies to decisions to expand to other smaller U.K. cities, including Belfast, where the economy has been growing steadily since the sectarian violence subsided.

In the past, travelers from Belfast and from Scottish cities like Edinburgh had to take connecting flights to Heathrow or to other European airports before tansferring to U.S.-bound flights. Continental's nonstop service has made that unnecessary.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

I was chatting with a bloke today who worked in the freight section of Bristol Airport in the early 1960s straight from school. He was in administration and stayed at the airport for about three years.

During our discussion he confirmed that the boss at the airport in the early 60s was still known as the airport commandant. It presumably harks back to the military era although it also suggests a POW camp. I think the first person in charge of Whitchurch Airport when it opened in 1930 was called the commandant and still used his military rank, albeit the airport was a civil one. Perhaps the first commandant at Lulsgate was a former military officer, hence the title commandant.

I wonder when the term commandant was phased at at the airport.

Was Les Wilson the last managing director? His successors all appear to have been called the chief executive officer.

 

[superking]

through out all industries oler names have crept in as well as fancy names for people in charge or owners. People working on shop floor het fancy names. One of the most popular term is bin operative,in olden days they were called rubbish collectors. It amazes me what they call people now a days for what ever job of work.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

With airlines ceasing to exist at regular intervals I’ve been looking back at BRS over the past 30 years or so to see which airlines that once served the airport no longer exist. I’ve counted both scheduled and charter operators but with the latter it had to be regular weekly charters over at least one season. I’m sure I’ve missed out many so any help on that score would be appreciated.

Aero Lloyd - ceased operating

Air 2000 - rebranded as First Choice Airways

Air Arann - rebranded as Stobart Air

Air Columbus - ceased operating

Air France Regional - merged into Hop!

Air Liberte - ceased operating

Airlinair - merged into Hop!

Airtours - rebranded as MyTravel Airways

Air Southwest - ceased operating

Air UK Leisure - ceased operating

Airways International Cymru - ceased operating

Airworld - integrated into Flying Colours Airlines

All Leisure Airways - merged with TransAer International Airlines

Astraeus Airlines - ceased operating

Aviogenex - ceased operating

Axon Airlines - ceased operating

Azzurra Air - ceased operating

BACitiexpress - became BA Connect

BA Connect - ceased operating

bmi baby - ceased operating

bmi regional - rebranded as flybmi

Brit Air - merged into Hop!

Britannia Airways - rebranded as Thomsonfly

British European - rebranded as Flybe

British Midland Airways - ceased operating

Brymon Airways - BA subsidiary merged into BACitiexpress

Canada 3000 - ceased operating

Capital Airlines - ceased operating

Continental Airlines - merged with United Airlines

Cronus Airlines - integrated into Aegean Airlines

Dan-Air - merged into British Airways

Eurocypria Airlines - ceased operating

EuroManx - ceased operating

European Aviation - ceased operating

Excel Airways - rebranded as XL Airways

First Choice Airways - merged with Thomsonfly as Thomson Airways

flybmi - ceased operating

Flightline - ceased operating

Flying Colours Airlines - rebranded as JMC Air

Futura International Airways - ceased operating

Germania - ceased operating

GoFly - merged into easyJet (ack kfs's post)

Hamburg International - ceased operating

Helios Airways - ceased operating

Hispania Airways - ceased operating

Hop! - rebranded as Air France HOP

Iberworld - ceased operating

Inter European Airways - merged with Airtours

Inex-Adria Airways - reverted to original name Adria Airways

Islandsflug - ceased operating

JAT Airways - renamed Air Serbia

Jersey European Airways - rebranded as British European

JMC Air - rebranded as Thomas Cook Airlines

Karthago Airlines - ceased operating

Lauda Air - merged into Austrian Airlines (ack superking's post)

LTE International Airways - ceased operating

Monarch Airlines - ceased operating

MyTravel Airways - merged with Thomas Cook Airlines

Nordic Airlink - ceased operating

Oasis Airlines - ceased operating

Odyssey International - ceased operating

OLT Express - ceased operating

Orion Airways - integrated into Britannia Airways

Palmair - ceased operating

Paramount Airways - ceased operating

Royal Airlines - ceased operating

Sabena - ceased operations

Small Planet Airlines - ceased operating

Spanair - ceased operating

Sunways - ceased operating

Thomas Cook Airlines - ceased operating

Thomson Airways - rebranded as TUI Airways

Thomsonfly - rebranded as Thomson Airways

Tyrolean Airways - merged with Austrian Airlines

WOW Air - ceased operating

XL Airways - ceased operating

There are also many existing airlines that once served BRS, either scheduled services or as regular charter carriers. Here are some. Again, I know there must be others that I’ve overlooked.

Aegean Airlines

Aer Lingus ('mainline')

Air Europa

British Airways City Flyer

Eastern Airways

Eurowings

Helvetic Airways

Iberia Airlines

Isles of Scilly Skybus

Jet2

Onur

Pegasus Airlines

SAS

SATA Air Azores

Titan Airways

Transavia

 

[Scottie Dog]

That's one heckk of a list and is probably true of a lot of the other UK airports. Thanks so much for sparing the time to research that.

 

[superking]

Lauda air did I think 2 winter charters for ski. I cant remember if it was GVA or Saltzberg they operated into. It was organised by a Bristol travel agent that wanted to see a airline from Austria operate a ski route.

 

[kfs]

With airlines ceasing to exist at regular intervals I’ve been looking back at BRS over the past 30 years or so to see which airlines that once served the airport no longer exist. I’ve counted both scheduled and charter operators but with the latter it had to be regular weekly charters over at least one season. I’m sure I’ve missed out many so any help on that score would be appreciated.

Aero Lloyd - ceased operating

Air 2000 - rebranded as First Choice Airways

Air Arann - rebranded as Stobart Air

Air Columbus - ceased operating

Air France Regional - merged into Hop!

Air Liberte - ceased operating

Airlinair - merged into Hop!

Airtours - rebranded as MyTravel Airways

Air Southwest - ceased operating

Air UK Leisure - ceased operating

Airways International Cymru - ceased operating

Airworld - integrated into Flying Colours Airlines

All Leisure Airways - merged with TransAer International Airlines

Astraeus Airlines - ceased operating

Aviogenex - ceased operating

Axon Airlines - ceased operating

Azzurra Air - ceased operating

BACitiexpress - became BA Connect

BA Connect - ceased operating

bmi baby - ceased operating

bmi regional - rebranded as flybmi

Brit Air - merged into Hop!

Britannia Airways - rebranded as Thomsonfly

British European - rebranded as Flybe

British Midland Airways - ceased operating

Brymon Airways - BA subsidiary merged into BACitiexpress

Canada 3000 - ceased operating

Capital Airlines - ceased operating

Continental Airlines - merged with United Airlines

Cronus Airlines - integrated into Aegean Airlines

Dan-Air - merged into British Airways

Eurocypria Airlines - ceased operating

EuroManx - ceased operating

European Aviation - ceased operating

Excel Airways - rebranded as XL Airways

First Choice Airways - merged with Thomsonfly as Thomson Airways

flybmi - ceased operating

Flightline - ceased operating

Flying Colours Airlines - rebranded as JMC Air

Futura International Airways - ceased operating

Germania - ceased operating

Hamburg International - ceased operating

Helios Airways - ceased operating

Hispania Airways - ceased operating

Iberworld - ceased operating

Inter European Airways - merged with Airtours

Inex-Adria Airways - reverted to original name Adria Airways

Islandsflug - ceased operating

JAT Airways - renamed Air Serbia

Jersey European Airways - rebranded as British European

JMC Air - rebranded as Thomas Cook Airlines

Karthago Airlines - ceased operating

LTE International Airways - ceased operating

Monarch Airlines - ceased operating

MyTravel Airways - merged with Thomas Cook Airlines

Nordic Airlink - ceased operating

Oasis Airlines - ceased operating

Odyssey International - ceased operating

OLT Express - ceased operating

Orion Airways - integrated into Britannia Airways

Palmair - ceased operating

Paramount Airways - ceased operating

Royal Airlines - ceased operating

Sabena - ceased operations

Small Planet Airlines - ceased operating

Spanair - ceased operating

Sunways - ceased operating

Thomas Cook Airlines - ceased operating

Thomson Airways - rebranded as TUI Airways

Thomsonfly - rebranded as Thomson Airways

Tyrolean Airways - merged with Austrian Airlines

WOW Air - ceased operating

XL Airways - ceased operating

There are also many existing airlines that once served BRS, either scheduled services or as regular charter carriers. Here are some. Again, I know there must be others that I’ve overlooked.

Aegean Airlines

Aer Lingus ('mainline')

Air Europa

British Airways City Flyer

Eastern Airways

Eurowings

Helvetic Airways

Iberia Airlines

Isles of Scilly Skybus

Jet2

Onur

Pegasus Airlines

SAS

SATA Air Azores

Titan Airways

Transavia

Very long list and shows the rate of change and the fragility of the airline industry. One missing name is Go, 2001-2003, before being rebranded after Easyjet takeover.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Very long list and shows the rate of change and the fragility of the airline industry. One missing name is Go, 2001-2003, before being rebranded after Easyjet takeover.

Of course - how could I have missed that one out? One of the obvious ones.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Lauda air did I think 2 winter charters for ski. I cant remember if it was GVA or Saltzberg they operated into. It was organised by a Bristol travel agent that wanted to see a airline from Austria operate a ski route.

I think that you are right. I knew I'd missed some out.