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IAS Cargo Airlines

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International Aviation Services/IAS Cargo Airlines
IATA ICAO Call sign
FF — —
Founded1966
Commenced operations
1972
Ceased operations
1979 (merged to form British Cargo)
HubsLondon Gatwick
Douglas DC-8-55 at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport in 1978

International Aviation Services Ltd., trading as IAS Cargo Airlines from April 1975,[1] was a wholly privately owned independent[nb 1] British airline that was based at London Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom. It commenced operations in 1967, and with own aircraft from June 1972. In the month of August 1979 it merged with London Stansted based Transmeridian Air Cargo (TMAC) to form the short-lived British Cargo Airlines.[2][3][4]

History

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Beginning

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Bristol Britannia serie 300F at Gatwick airport in 1973

International Aviation Services Ltd. was formed in 1966 as an air transport consultancy. It commenced worldwide cargo charters from London Gatwick in 1967 with leased Bristol Britannia 300F turboprop aircraft.[nb 2][5][6] It began replacing leased aircraft with its own ones in 1971. It got its own air operator's certificate (AOC) in June 1972 in the name of International Aviation Services (UK) Ltd.[6] and adopted IAS Cargo Airlines trading name in April 1975.[1]

IAS Cargo Airlines acquired additional, second-hand Britannia turboprop (converted to freighters) as well as a Canadair CL-44 "swing tail" freighter during the early 1970s to expand its fleet to cope with growing worldwide demand for freight services.

Jet operations

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When, from the early 1970s, the world's major scheduled airlines began re-equipping their fleets with new generation widebodied jet aircraft a growing number of older generation, narrow-bodied jetliners, such as the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8, became available on the second-hand market at prices smaller airlines that were lacking the resources to invest in new equipment could afford.

IAS Cargo became one of these airlines that took advantage of this situation by purchasing the first DC-8-50F jet freighter in 1974[1] with which operations commenced the following year.[7] As business continued to expand, another DC-8-50Fs was added to the fleet during the second half of the 1970s. By the end of the decade the company's fleet mainly consisted of DC-8-50Fs.

In those years it was getting a growing number of air freight consignments that were shipped to Gatwick airport from the "other side" of the Channel. In October 1978 IAS Cargo introduced its first larger capacity, a stretched DC-8 Super 60 series freighter, a leased model 62CF.[1][8]

Merging with a rival

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TMAC Canadair CL-44D4

Stansted-based Trans Meridian Air Cargo (TMAC), another small independent British all-cargo operator wholly owned by Trafalgar House subsidiary Cunard Steamship Co,[9] had come into being in 1962.[10] TMAC also operated a similar aircraft fleet consisting of the same aircraft types, including a pair of DC-8Fs.[11][12] Therefore, combining both companies' businesses to achieve greater operational synergies as well as to attain greater economies of scale seemed to be the next "logical" step to ensure survival in a competitive market place dominated by bigger, more powerful rivals.

IAS Cargo Airlines merged with TMAC on 15 August 1979 to create British Cargo Airlines Ltd., which began trading under its new name five days later.[13] The merged entity's fleet comprised 15 aircraft, including eight DC-8 freighters, six CL-44-D and one CL-44-0 turboprop freighters. The jets were based at Gatwick while the turboprops were stationed at Stansted.[2][3][4][9][12][14][15]

Closure and causes of collapse

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The newly created British Cargo Airlines didn't even last a year: it folded in March 1980.[3][4][13][16] The main reasons for the combined airline collapse included:

  • A deep recession in Britain, which affected UK-based manufacturing companies that were the airline's main customers. This caused a slump in those companies' output of manufactured goods and led to a collapse in demand for specialist air freight services.
  • Steeply rising jet fuel prices in the aftermath of the fall of the Shah of Iran. This increased the operating costs of relatively fuel-thirsty narrow-bodied jet freighters such as the Boeing 707 and the DC-8 (compared with more fuel-efficient widebodied freighters).
  • A big influx of long-haul widebodied aircraft capacity into the fleets of British Airways and British Caledonian, Britain's two principal scheduled airlines at the time, as well as their main overseas competitors' fleets during the late 1970s/early 1980s. This resulted in a major increase in bellyhold cargo capacity that cost freight forwarders and shippers less to fill (compared with the higher rates that were required to fill narrow-bodied pure freighters profitably).

Fleet

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IAS Cargo fleet consiste of the following aircraft all along operational years:

Aircraft type Total Remarks
Boeing 707-320C 5 all leased from other air carriers
Bristol B-175-300F Britannia 6
Canadair CL-44-D4 2 1 leased
Douglas DC 8F 5 1 serie 62F leased

Incidents and accidents

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Dan-Air/IAS Cargo Boeing 707

In 1977 IAS Cargo Airlines became indirectly involved in a fatal accident causing the loss of an aircraft bearing its name as part of a hybrid colour scheme. This hybrid colour scheme combined parts of IAS Cargo Airlines' livery with that of Dan-Air Services Ltd, one of the leading wholly privately owned, independent British airlines that was the owner and operator of the crashed aircraft.[2][17]

The accident itself involved one of Dan-Air's Boeing 707-321C freighters (registration G-BEBP), which IAS Cargo Airlines had operated under a so-called "wet lease" arrangement with Dan-Air, whereby the latter was providing the aircraft as well as flight crews and maintenance support under contract to the former. Some air accident databases wrongly cite IAS Cargo Airlines as the operator of the aircraft involved in this accident despite Dan-Air being that aircraft's actual operator[3], The mentioned aircraft crashed on 14 May 1977 during the final approach to Lusaka Airport at the end of a non-scheduled all-cargo flight from London Heathrow via Athens and Nairobi when its right-hand horizontal stabiliser separated as a result of metal fatigue, causing a loss of pitch control and killing all six occupants.[18][19]

A major industry debate on the maintenance requirements as well as service life limitations of high-time "geriatric" jets ensued as a result of this accident.[20][21][22]

(For further details see 1977 Dan-Air Boeing 707 crash.)

See also

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Notes and citations

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Notes
  1. ^ independent from government-owned corporations
  2. ^ these aircraft comprised two former Caledonian Britannia 314s acquired from British Caledonian Airways in 1971 (one of which entered service while the other was used for spares)
Citations
  1. ^ a b c IAS Cargo Airlines - Airline Profile: Number fifty-five, Flight International, 22 May 1976, p. 1357
  2. ^ a b www.airlinehistory.co.uk The World's Airlines, past, present & future by David Lyall - IAS Cargo Airlines
  3. ^ a b c www.airlinehistory.co.uk The World's Airlines, past, present & future by David Lyall - British Cargo Airlines
  4. ^ a b c British Cargo Airlines goes into receivership but continues flying, Air Transport, Flight International, 15 March 1980, p. 827
  5. ^ World Airline directory, Flight International, 28 April 1979, p. 1380
  6. ^ a b New British airline, Air Transport, Flight International, 5 October 1972, p. 454
  7. ^ Air Transport, Flight International, 7 August 1975, p. 174
  8. ^ Airliner market, Air Transport, Flight International, 28 October 1978, p. 1546
  9. ^ a b Cargo airlines to merge, Air Transport, Flight International, 4 August 1979, p. 309
  10. ^ World airline directory, Flight International, 28 April 1979, p. 1409
  11. ^ Air Transport, Flight International, 23 July 1977, p. 255
  12. ^ a b Green light for British Cargo, Air Transport, Flight International, 1 September 1979, p. 636
  13. ^ a b World airline directory, Flight International, 26 July 1980, p. 295
  14. ^ IAS and Transmeridian merge sales organisations, Air Transport, Flight International, 14 July 1979, p. 76
  15. ^ Air Transport, Flight International, 13 October 1979, p. 1174
  16. ^ Aircraft (Gone but not forgotten ... HEAVYLIFT CARGO AIRLINES: Enter the Belfast), p. 50, Ian Allan Publishing, Hersham, May 2011
  17. ^ The Spirit of Dan-Air, Simons, G.M., GMS Enterprises, Peterborough, 1993, pp. 89, 90
  18. ^ The Spirit of Dan-Air, Simons, G.M., GMS Enterprises, Peterborough, 1993, p. 89
  19. ^ Inspection shortcomings contributed to Lusaka 707 fatigue accident, Air Transport, Flight International, 23 June 1979, p. 2247
  20. ^ The Spirit of Dan-Air, Simons, G.M., GMS Enterprises, Peterborough, 1993, pp. 90/1
  21. ^ The Geriatric Jet Problem, Flight International, 22 October 1977, p. 1201
  22. ^ The Geriatric Jet Problem - Summary, Flight International, 22 October 1977, p. 1207

References

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  • "Flight International". Flight International. Sutton, UK: Reed Business Information. ISSN 0015-3710. (World Airline Directory, 1967–1980)
  • Simons, Graham M. (1993). The Spirit of Dan-Air. Peterborough, UK: GMS Enterprises. ISBN 1-870384-20-2.

Further reading

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  • Merton Jones, A.C. (1976). British Independent Airlines since 1946. Maidenhead (U.K.): LAAS International and Merseyside Aviation Society. pp. 225–226. ISBN 0 902420 07 0.
  • "Aircraft (Gone but not forgotten: HeavyLift Cargo Airlines — The Transmeridian years, p. 49". Aircraft. Hersham, UK: Ian Allan Publishing. May 2011. ISSN 2041-2150. (Aircraft Illustrated online)
  • Wickstead, M.J. (2014). Airlines of the British Isles since 1919. Staplefield (West Sussex - U.K.): Air Britain (Historians) Ltd. p. 266. ISBN 978-0-85130-456-4.
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