Bristol 170 Freighter 32 of Silver City Airways

Carvair and ambassador at bristol airport 1965 arp

An air ferry is a

ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...

service in which cars and passengers are transported by aircraft. Use of air ferries peaked in the 1950s, but the advent of more economical alternative modes of transport in the 1960s resulted in the demise of these services. Today a large part of cross-channel car transport is done through the

Channel Tunnel The Channel Tunnel (french: Tunnel sous la Manche), also known as the Chunnel, is a railway tunnel that connects Folkestone (Kent, England, UK) with Coquelles ( Hauts-de-France, France) beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. ...

British services

The air ferry service was inaugurated by retired

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

officer Air Commodore Griffith J. ("Taffy") Powell, who founded an airline company called Silver City in 1948. Using

Bristol Freighter The Bristol Type 170 Freighter is a British twin-engine aircraft designed and built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company as both a freighter and airliner. Its best known use was as an air ferry to carry cars and their passengers over relatively sh ...

aeroplanes, the service operated until 1954 from Lympne airfield, and later from

Lydd airport London Ashford Airport is east of the town of Lydd and south of Ashford in the district of Folkestone and Hythe, in Kent, England. Originally named Lydd Ferryfield, it is now also known as London Ashford Airport, despite being from Lon ...

. Other companies and routes opened across the

English Channel The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...

. The ultimate air ferry aeroplane was the

Aviation Traders Carvair The Aviation Traders ATL-98 Carvair is a retired large transport aircraft powered by four radial engines. It was a Douglas DC-4-based air ferry conversion developed by Freddie Laker's Aviation Traders (Engineering) Limited (ATL), with a capac ...

, a conversion of the

Douglas DC-4 The Douglas DC-4 is an American four-engined (piston), propeller-driven airliner developed by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Military versions of the plane, the C-54 and R5D, served during World War II, in the Berlin Airlift and into the 1960s ...

. Air ferries were popular during the 1950s, when they were significantly faster and not much more expensive than the sea ferries. They ceased to be economically viable in the 1960s with the introduction of faster and more reliable

roll-on/roll-off Roll-on/roll-off (RORO or ro-ro) ships are cargo ships designed to carry wheeled cargo, such as cars, motorcycles, trucks, semi-trailer trucks, buses, trailers, and railroad cars, that are driven on and off the ship on their own wheels or using ...

ferries, plus

hovercraft A hovercraft, also known as an air-cushion vehicle or ACV, is an amphibious Craft (vehicle), craft capable of travelling over land, water, mud, ice, and other surfaces. Hovercraft use blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull ...

on a few routes. Aircraft manufacturers were also reluctant to develop and build new aircraft for a small specialised market.

Airlines that offered air ferry services involving the British Isles

All the airlines below are defunct except Aer Lingus. Aer Lingus no longer offers transport of cars. *

Aer Lingus Aer Lingus ( ; an anglicisation of the Irish , meaning "air fleet" compare Welsh 'llynges awyr') is the flag carrier of Ireland. Founded by the Irish Government, it was privatised between 2006 and 2015 and it is now a wholly owned subsidiary ...

Air Ferry An air ferry is a ferry service in which cars and passengers are transported by aircraft. Use of air ferries peaked in the 1950s, but the advent of more economical alternative modes of transport in the 1960s resulted in the demise of these servic ...

British United Air Ferries British United Air Ferries (BUAF) was a wholly private, British independentindependent from government-owned corporations car and passenger ferry airline based in the United Kingdom during the 1960s. It specialised in cross- Channel ferry flig ...

(later British Air Ferries and British World Airlines) *

Channel Air Bridge Channel Air Bridge was a private British independentindependent from government-owned corporations airline specialising in cross-Channel vehicle-cum-passenger ferry services. Freddie Laker started Channel Air Bridge as a sister airline of Air C ...

(merged with Silver City Airways forming British United Air Ferries) *

Silver City Airways Silver City Airways was an airline, based in the United Kingdom, that operated mainly in Europe, between 1946 and 1962. Unlike many airlines at the time, it was independent of government-owned corporations; its parent company was Zinc Corpo ...

(merged with Channel Air Bridge forming British United Air Ferries)

External links

* https://web.archive.org/web/20070928014429/http://www.franceforfreebooters.com/travel/SilverCity.htm * http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/cab.htm {{DEFAULTSORT:Air Ferry Commercial aviation Road transport

Ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...