Overview

Advanced 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 Earths second-largest ocean, covering approximately one_fifth of its surface. ...

The world's first ABC flight was operated on April 2, 1973, by Laker Airways between Manchester and Toronto carrying 250 passengers on one of the airline's newly acquired McDonnell Douglas DC-10 widebodied jets. April 2 is the 92nd day of the year (93rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 273 days remaining. ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ... // Laker Airways was a wholly privately owned, Independent British airline founded by the late Sir Freddie Laker and his first son Kevin, who pre-deceased him soon after the airlines inception in 1966 as a result of a motoring accident on the A23 London-Brighton trunk road near Gatwick... Manchester is a major city in North West England, historically notable for being the worlds first industrialised city, and its subsequent central role in the Industrial Revolution. ... The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 is a three-engined medium to long-range widebody airliner, with two engines mounted on underwing pylons and a third engine at the base of the vertical stabilizer. ... Look up jet in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Background

The introduction of ABC flights was an attempt by the airline industry and the aviation authorities in Europe and North America - first and foremost in Britain and the US as well as Canada - to replace the complicated and unworkable "affinity group" charter rules with a more rational set of rules that was easier to implement as well as less open to potential abuse. European redirects here. ... World map showing North America A satellite composite image of North America. ... United States may refer to: Places: United States of America SS United States, the fastest ocean liner ever built. ... Alternate use, see charter airline, yacht charter, bare-boat charter or Charter Communications. ...

In the late 1960s an obscure rule crafted by IATA concerning the permissibility of chartering aircraft to operate flights across the North Atlantic 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 leading Independent British airlines of yesteryear, such as Britannia Airways, British United Airways, Caledonian Airways, Dan-Air and Laker Airways for instance. (Some of these wholly privately owned, Independent airlines - notably British United Airways - were actually IATA members themselves. However, at the time IATA was dominated by majority or wholly state-owned "flag" carriers, which used that organisation to frame rules that were designed to protect them from what they considered "excessive" and "unwarranted" competiton 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 plane 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 their intended date of travel and be a "bona fide", paid-up member of an officially recognised organisation. Although some of these "affinity groups" were indeed genuine, an overwhelming majority of these "common interest associations" was actually 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 - 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 itself. In some cases, this was openly 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 unscrupelously 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'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 ever greater 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 a jealous IATA member or by a fellow Independent competitor.) In addition, the authorities fined the airlines operating these flights for each bogus passenger whose name happened to appear on the passenger list of an "affinity group" charter. (In some cases the fines paid by the airlines to the authorities amounted to several thousand pounds/US dollars/Canadian dollars.) The International Air Transport Association is an international trade organization of airlines headquarted in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. ... For other uses, see Atlantic (disambiguation) The Atlantic Ocean is Earths second-largest ocean, covering approximately one-fifth of its surface. ... For alternate usages of BEA see Bea (disambiguation) Hawker-Siddeley Trident 1C (G-ARPC), built 1962 and destroyed in a fire at London (Heathrow) Airport in 1975. ... After technical problems with the Comet, BOAC resumed jet service with imported Boeing 707s. ... Britannia Airways Boeing 757-200 in pre-Thomson colours Britannia Airways Boeing 757-200 in Thomson colours Britannia Airways was the largest charter airline in the United Kingdom, rebranded as Thomsonfly in 2005. ... British United Airways (BUA) was the largest independent UK based airline during the 1960s. ... Caledonian Airways was a Scottish international airline formed in 1961, initially using Douglas DC-7s. ... // Dan-Air Services Limited was an airline based in the United Kingdom that commenced operations in May 1953 with a single Douglas DC-3 Dakota. It was a subsidiary of Davies and Newman, a ship broking company originally established in the City of London in 1922, from whose initials the... // Laker Airways was a wholly privately owned, Independent British airline founded by the late Sir Freddie Laker and his first son Kevin, who pre-deceased him soon after the airlines inception in 1966 as a result of a motoring accident on the A23 London-Brighton trunk road near Gatwick... A jetliner is an airliner powered by jet engines (usually of the turbofan type). ... The Boeing 707 is a four engined commercial passenger jet aircraft developed by Boeing in the early 1950s. ... Gatwick Airport (IATA Airport Code: LGW, ICAO Airport Code: EGKK) is Londons second airport and the second largest airport in the UK after Heathrow. ... Officially the pound is the name for at least three different units of mass: The pound (avoirdupois). ... The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States. ... . This coin features a red-coloured poppy embedded in the centre of a maple leaf above a banner reading Remember - Souvenir. The mint claims that this is the first colour coin in circulation in the world. ...

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 and New York on a daily basis.) London (pronounced ) is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom(coming from Roman Londinium ). An important settlement for around two millennia, London is today one of the worlds most important business and financial centres, [1] and its involvement in politics, culture, education, entertainment, media, fashion, sport and... Official language(s) English de facto Capital Albany Largest city New York City Area  Ranked 27th  - Total 54,520 sq mi (141,205 km²)  - Width 285 miles (455 km)  - Length 330 miles (530 km)  - % water 13. ...

The resulting compromise led to the framing of a set of new "Advanced 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. (The advance booking requirement was 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 competitve 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] 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, 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 world-wide presence as a major scheduled airline.]) British Caledonian was an airline formed from the merger in 1970 of British United Airways and Caledonian Airways. ...