Advance Booking Charter
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Advance Booking Charter flights were first introduced in the early 1970s to meet the largely unsatisfied demand for affordable long-haul flights to popular destinations, especially on both sides of the
North Atlantic ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
. The world's first ABC flight was operated on 2 April 1973, by
Laker Airways Laker Airways was a private British airline founded by Sir Freddie Laker in 1966. It was originally a charter airline flying passengers and cargo worldwide. Its head office was located at Gatwick Airport in Crawley, England. It became the seco ...
between
Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
and
Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
carrying 250 passengers on one of the airline's newly acquired
McDonnell Douglas DC-10 The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 is an American trijet wide-body aircraft manufactured by McDonnell Douglas. The DC-10 was intended to succeed the DC-8 for long-range flights. It first flew on August 29, 1970; it was introduced on August 5, 1971, ...
widebodied
jet aircraft A jet aircraft (or simply jet) is an aircraft (nearly always a fixed-wing aircraft) propelled by jet engines. Whereas the engines in propeller-powered aircraft generally achieve their maximum efficiency at much lower speeds and altitudes, je ...
.


Background

The introduction of ABC flights was an attempt by the airline industry and the aviation authorities in Europe and North America, mainly the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, to replace the complicated and unworkable "affinity group"
charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the rec ...
rules with a more rational set of rules that was easier to implement as well as less open to potential abuse. In the late 1960s an obscure rule crafted by
IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA ) is a trade association of the world's airlines founded in 1945. IATA has been described as a cartel since, in addition to setting technical standards for airlines, IATA also organized tariff ...
concerning the permissibility of chartering aircraft to operate flights across the
North Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe and ...
for the sole purpose of carrying so-called "affinity groups" at fares below IATA's officially agreed minimum fare for any given route by the organisation's member airlines through their wholly owned, non-IATA subsidiaries (such as BEA Airtours or BOAC Charters for instance), came to the attention of a determined group of mainly non-IATA airlines, which sought to exploit these legal loopholes for themselves. This group of airlines included many former leading independent British airlines, such as
Britannia Airways Britannia Airways was a charter airline based in the UK. It was founded in 1961 as Euravia and became the world's largest holiday airline. Britannia's main bases were at London Gatwick, London Stansted, London Luton, Cardiff, Bristol, East Mi ...
,
British United Airways British United Airways (BUA) was a private, independentindependent from government-owned corporations British airline formed as a result of the merger of Airwork Services and Hunting-Clan Air Transport in July 1960, making it the largest wholly ...
,
Caledonian Airways Caledonian Airways was a wholly private, independentindependent from government-owned corporations British charter airline formed in April 1961. It began with a single 104-seat Douglas DC-7C leased from the Belgian flag carrier Sabena.''Flyi ...
,
Dan-Air Dan-Air (Dan Air Services Limited) was an airline based in the United Kingdom and a wholly owned subsidiary of London shipbroker, shipbroking firm Davies and Newman. It was started in 1953 with a single aircraft. Initially, it operated cargo a ...
and
Laker Airways Laker Airways was a private British airline founded by Sir Freddie Laker in 1966. It was originally a charter airline flying passengers and cargo worldwide. Its head office was located at Gatwick Airport in Crawley, England. It became the seco ...
. Some of these wholly privately owned, independent airlines, notably British United Airways, were IATA members themselves. However, at the time IATA was dominated by majority or wholly state-owned "
flag carrier A flag carrier is a transport company, such as an airline or shipping company, that, being locally registered in a given sovereign state, enjoys preferential rights or privileges accorded by the government for international operations. Hist ...
s", which used that organisation to frame rules that were designed to protect them from what they considered excessive and unwarranted competition by independent airlines. The relevant rule stipulated that transatlantic charter flights were permissible provided that the only reason to transport a group of passengers who wanted to travel together on the same aircraft was those passengers' shared interest and that all of them were members of the same club, rather than carrying a group of "unconnected" individuals on a specially chartered aircraft whose sole purpose of travelling together on that aircraft was to avail themselves of a cheap flight. That rule furthermore stipulated that anyone who wanted to purchase a ticket for an "affinity group" charter flight needed to book at least three months in advance of the date of travel and be a ''
bona fide In human interactions, good faith ( la, bona fides) is a sincere intention to be fair, open, and honest, regardless of the outcome of the interaction. Some Latin phrases have lost their literal meaning over centuries, but that is not the case ...
'', member of an officially recognised organisation. Although some of these "affinity groups" were genuine, an overwhelming majority of these "common interest associations" was fake. The sole purpose of their existence was to sign up as many members as were needed to profitably fill a contemporary long-haul jetliner, usually a
Boeing 707 The Boeing 707 is an American, long-range, narrow-body airliner, the first jetliner developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Developed from the Boeing 367-80 prototype first flown in 1954, the initial first flew on December 20, ...
, for a transatlantic charter flight by issuing each prospective passenger with a back-dated, bogus membership card of a non-existent organisation, sometimes on the day of departure. In some cases, this was done in the offices of "specialist" travel agencies that had suddenly sprung up on both sides of the Atlantic to cash in on the new "cheap flights bonanza". These travel agents unscrupulously sold thousands of tickets to people falsely representing themselves to the aviation authorities in Britain, the US and Canada as members of an ever-greater variety of imaginary "affinity groups". As soon as this scam had come to the relevant authorities' attention, they began policing the departure areas of the main departure and arrival airports on both sides of the Atlantic with the aim of catching bogus "affinity group" members and preventing them from boarding their flights.
Gatwick Gatwick Airport (), also known as London Gatwick , is a major international airport near Crawley, West Sussex, England, south of Central London. In 2021, Gatwick was the third-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the UK, after Hea ...
's departure lounge used to be one of the most prominent places where these unannounced raids were conducted with increasing regularity. As a result of these actions an increasing number of passengers hoping to board a cheap "affinity group" charter was denied boarding their aircraft. Some flights were said to have departed without a single passenger on board. There were also reports about raids the authorities conducted on a particular airline/charterer only after having been tipped off by an IATA member or by a fellow independent competitor. In addition, the authorities fined the airlines operating these flights for each bogus passenger whose name appeared on the passenger list of an "affinity group" charter. In some cases these fines amounted to several thousand
pounds sterling Sterling (abbreviation: stg; Other spelling styles, such as STG and Stg, are also seen. ISO 4217, ISO code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of #Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories, its associated territori ...
/
US dollar The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
s/
Canadian dollar The Canadian dollar ( symbol: $; code: CAD; french: dollar canadien) is the currency of Canada. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, there is no standard disambiguating form, but the abbreviation Can$ is often suggested by notable style ...
s.


ABC flight rules

In the end, the authorities as well as the industry admitted that the absurd "affinity group" system worked to nobody's satisfaction. They also admitted that the real purpose of travel of an overwhelming majority of those who were travelling under the old "affinity group" rules was to avail themselves of a cheap flight. It was therefore decided to scrap the entire system and to replace it with a new system that recognised as well as legalised the growing demand for cheap transatlantic air travel at fares below the official IATA minimum fares. This was also the time Laker Airways was battling the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic to gain approval for its revolutionary " Skytrain" low-fare, "no frills" transatlantic scheduled service that it intended to operate between
London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
and
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
on a daily basis. The resulting compromise led to the framing of a set of new "Advance Booking Charter" (ABC) flight rules that did away with all of the onerous rules that had governed "affinity group" charters other than a four-week advance booking period (subsequently reduced to two weeks). However, the subsequent introduction of Laker Airways' "Skytrain" operation on key transatlantic routes between the UK and the US as well as the competitive response this triggered from other airlines, including many long-established IATA members, resulted in a growing range of low fares being offered on most scheduled services on a year-round basis. The established IATA carriers were able to afford these low fares by cross-subsidising them with their far more expensive premium (mostly
business class Business class is a travel class available on many commercial airlines and rail lines, known by brand names which vary, by airline or rail company. In the airline industry, it was originally intended as an intermediate level of service between ...
) fares. This undermined the long-term economics as well as the popularity of ABC flights to such an extent that these flights ceased to be viable by the mid-1980s. Most of the airlines that were major operators of "affinity group" charters/ABC flights had in fact already begun abandoning this market with the advent of "Skytrain" in the late 1970s. At the time
British Caledonian British Caledonian (BCal) was a British private independent airline which operated out of Gatwick Airport in south-east England during the 1970s and 1980s. It was created as an alternative to the British government-controlled corporation airlin ...
, for example, whose predecessor Caledonian Airways had at one time been the dominant "affinity group" charter carrier across the Atlantic with a market share of 22.5%, decided to pull out of the increasingly unprofitable ABC market altogether to fully concentrate on building up transatlantic scheduled services as part of its effort to increase its worldwide presence as a major scheduled airline.


Notes and references

;Notes ;Bibliography * *{{citation , title=Affinity on the Atlantic , date=15 February 1972 , work=Flight International , page=239 , url=http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1962/1962%20-%200237.html Civil aviation