Көрсет Лайн: Британдық әуежол тарихы

Defunct British airline

Court Line was a 20th century British tramp shipping company that was founded in 1905. In the 1960s it diversified into shipbuilding and charter aviation. Its merchant shipping interests were based in London. Its shipyards were at Appledore in Devon and Sunderland in Tyne and Wear. Its airline was based at Luton Airport in Bedfordshire. It also provided bus services in Luton and surrounding areas. Its airline helped pioneer the concept of "cheap and cheerful" package tours to Spain and other destinations in the Mediterranean in conjunction with Clarksons Holidays, thus taking part in the establishment of a whole new way of holidaymaking for the British public. The Court Line group, including its airline and subsidiary tour operators, Clarksons Travel Group and Horizon Travel, ceased trading on 15 August 1974, with at least £7 million owing to 100,000 holidaymakers.

thumb|Court Line BAC One Eleven 518FG G AXMJ at Berlin Gatow in September 1973. Seven months later, this aircraft was involved in the flight 95 runway incursion incident at Luton. To coincide with the arrival of the first BAC One Eleven 500, the airline changed its name on 1 January 1970 to Court Line Aviation and introduced a new corporate look and strategy that focused exclusively on the then fast growing package holiday market. As the larger One Eleven 500s were delivered, all but one of the smaller, former Autair 400 series One Elevens were retired. The corporate look was an all over colour design by Peter Murdoch. In keeping with the holiday "feel good factor", One Elevens were painted in the following distinctive, eye catching pastel colour combinations: yellow/gold/orange, pink/rose/magenta, pale violet/mauve/purple, light green/mid green/forest green. These were named Halcyon Skies. Aircrew wore trendy uniforms designed by Mary Quant. This was part of making passengers feel that the flight was a "fun part" of their holiday. For many, it would be their first flying experience. Other airlines and tour operators were quick to jump on the burgeoning package holiday bandwagon. This resulted in increasingly fierce competition between operators and led to a price warfare to fill planes and hotels. Under Tom Gullick's management, Shipping Industrial Holdings' subsidiary Clarksons Holidays became the undisputed cut price leader in the IT market. By 1973, Clarksons carried 1.1 million holidaymakers—almost 1968's whole industry total—and contracted over 70% of Court Line's charter capacity. Its meteoric rise was entirely volume based. It generated the required volumes by ruthlessly undercutting rivals and outbidding them to win the race for securing accommodation in popular overseas holiday resorts, especially in Spain. Thus, in the early 1970s, a holiday in Majorca or on the Costa del Sol became affordable for the average person for the first time. The concept itself consisted of pre packed meals or snacks – usually, Spam salads out and sandwiches back — loaded into a small, two shelf compartment in the seat back in front of each passenger. The meal/snack for the outbound journey could be found in the top compartment, the one for the return trip in the lower section. The latter contained a pellet of dry ice placed under the plastic food container, thus preventing the food from spoiling. For the airline's cabin staff, it eliminated handling trays while airborne and resulted in a reduction of their workload. To prevent outbound passengers from consuming meals intended for return passengers, locks needed to be installed on the lower compartment that could only be opened by cabin staff during the aircraft's turnaround at the destination airport (although these were not always effective at deterring determined passengers). In addition to Court Line/Clarksons, Great Universal Stores (GUS) subsidiary Global was a major proponent of "seat back" catering among the UK's leading contemporary tour operators. It demanded that package holiday costs be driven down to the bare minimum by replacing the traditional meal service on holiday charter flights with something much cheaper that would simply give passengers "a slice of pie". Industry insiders referred to Global's new inflight catering concept as Global Pie. The cost advantage industry leaders such as Court Line/Clarksons and Global gained over their rivals as a result of their onboard catering innovation eventually forced every other major UK charter airline to adopt "seat back" catering on most flights serving short and medium haul IT destinations.

In 1973, Court Line took delivery of a pair of Lockheed L 1011 TriStars and became the first European airline to operate the Lockheed widebody. The aircraft were acquired on long term lease from Airlease International, a consortium of eleven British banks and financial institutions. They were uniquely customised for Court with double width doors to speed up passenger evacuation and featured integral passenger stairs and baggage conveyors to facilitate operations at smaller airports. Court Line provided LIAT with BAC One Eleven series 500 aircraft for scheduled passenger services in the Caribbean. The BAC One Eleven was the only jet aircraft type ever operated by LIAT. The introduction of the TriStar led to an increase in maintenance personnel and the modification of an existing hangar at the airline's Luton base to accommodate the new widebody. It also resulted in the purchase of a former Royal Air Force Blackburn Beverley cargo transporter from the Royal Aircraft Establishment to airlift Rolls Royce RB211 replacement engines and/or other essential spares in case the planes developed a serious technical fault at an overseas station that prevented them from returning to Luton (although in fact the Beverley was never civil registered and so was never used). In 1972, Clarksons's loss grew to £4.8 million. This was almost 2½ times as much as the combined loss of Thomson Holidays (£1.6 million) and Horizon Holidays (£388,000), its closest rivals. By 1973, Clarksons carried over a million passengers and accounted for 40% of Court Line's turnover. 1974 became known as the worst year for the UK package tour industry. At the beginning of the year, Britain plunged into the three day working week, as a consequence of the miners' strike that had been called to topple the Heath Government. This immediately reduced package holiday bookings by 30%. Clarksons, Court Line's main customer and in house tour operator since April 1973, was facing mounting financial pressure, and Vladimir Raitz's Horizon Holidays, another of the airline's major customers, collapsed during that time. Following Court Line's takeover of Clarksons the previous year for a nominal £1 (excluding a £3.4 million "subsidy" from the airline's parent company to cover the tour operator's projected 1973 loss), it purchased the Horizon group's goodwill for £600,000—including the acquisition of 58% of Horizon Midlands for £400,000—from the administrator. The deal, which became effective in February 1974, was based on payment of £1 for each Horizon customer Court Line expected to carry over the following three years. The airline's decision to purchase Clarksons as well as Horizon was intended to protect its business. In reality, these deals did little to help improve Court Line's increasingly bleak prospects. As soon as Court Line began diverting Horizon customers onto its planes, British Caledonian (BCal) threatened having Horizon compulsorily wound up if Court Line did not agree to settle Horizon's outstanding debts of over £100,000. BCal's threat forced Court Line to sub charter a fully crewed BCal One Eleven jet for Horizon's flying programme and to provide it with additional business. In addition to BCal forcing Court Line to compensate it for the loss of Horizon's business, Thomas Cook's money back guarantee – a scheme widely copied by other rival tour operators – further reduced the number of Horizon holidaymakers travelling on Court Line's jets. As a result, Court Line carried far fewer Horizon customers than it had anticipated. Clarksons's financial position further deteriorated. In a desperate attempt to fill the group's planes and hotel rooms so that it could stay afloat, Clarksons continued selling holiday packages below cost, with a fortnight all inclusive holiday to Majorca selling for as little as £50. On 15 August 1974, Court Line went bankrupt, with all flights cancelled, its fleet comprising two TriStars and nine One Eleven 500s grounded, all 1,150 staff losing their jobs and as many as 49,000 holidaymakers stranded overseas with no means of getting home. To enable stranded holidaymakers to return to the UK at no additional cost to them, the collapsed group's rivals organised an airlift through the Tour Operators' Study Group (TOSG), the package holiday industry association. This operation was paid for using the £3.5m bond the failed group's tour operators had deposited with TOSG. The Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA) set up a fund to provide an insurance against such an event in the future. This was a compulsory bonding scheme for travel companies that transported their customers by air. It was administered by TOSG. Leeward Islands Air Transport (LIAT) in the Caribbean as well as South Africa based Court Line Helicopters were among Court Line's overseas subsidiaries. Both survived the UK parent company's collapse.

thumb|G BDAT (G AYOR when in service with Court) was one of four BAC One Eleven 500s Dan Air acquired in 1974 following Court Line's bankruptcy. The aircraft is seen here in Dan Air's contemporary livery at Pisa Airport in 1975. Following the spectacular crash of Court Line and Clarksons at the height of the 1974 holiday season, the failed carrier's fairly new aircraft were acquired by other airlines. Cathay Pacific took the L 1011 TriStar widebodies while Dan Air and Monarch Airlines respectively purchased four and two of the One Eleven 500 narrowbodies. These aircraft needed to be re registered to avoid having them impounded by overseas airport authorities in lieu of the airport user charges Court Line owed them.