Originally Posted by
Wally Bird
I'm pretty sure it was Transavia, at least the AMS-LGW-IAH codeshare was in 1999.
Wally's right, it wasn't so much an "operating for" as a codeshare that Transavia were doing for Continental. At the time they had a two/three times daily schedule Amsterdam to Gatwick, and Continental took seats (I presume if there were any through passengers at all) on that. It was a period when a range of sundry connections were run through Gatwick. Virgin Atlantic even ran a Vickers Viscount in their full livery from there.
Regarding Airline of the Marshall Islands, I believe the DC8-62 Combi was looked after for them by Hawaiian Airlines. It was on the US register so remained under FAA oversight, unlike the local service turboprops which had MI- Marshall Islands tail numbers. Much of the DC8's main-deck cargo carried was fish. Must have stunk a bit for the passengers in the small compartment at the back. But the 748 they ran on local services in the islands for many years had started life over here in the UK, in Manchester, built new for the airline. Support of it in such an out-of-the-way place was a nightmare, it says here
http://derbosoft.proboards.com/index...t&thread=10341 which however is a fascinating page of photographs of exotic 748s, by someone who worked at the factory. It's a big long webpage so search for "Marshall" - unless you like the photos along the way ! The 748 had quite a history with the smll carriers of the Pacific islands (though I don't think it ever got used in Hawaii), getting chosen by Fiji, Tonga, and such like, sometimes just single aircraft. As you might guess, it was a way of channeling UK Foreign Aid to these small places.
Now, boys, regarding Cubana, surely you knew that when they were operating these connecting hops in Europe, well away from the prying eyes of the Houston headquarters, and fixed up by the CO Gatwick station manager who just happened to be an old airliner buff and pretended in his OAG submissions that it was a 737, Cubana were still operating Ilyushin 62s on them ? Of course, the passengers from Denver, bleary-eyed after an overnight transatlantic crossing, but who would never trust such an aircraft, had to be told it was actually a VC-10 that was standing in that day