13. This British airline renamed itself after the aircraft type it acquired in 1964. Name the airline and - by extension – the aircraft.
Britannia Airways (formally Euravia); Bristol Britannia
Correct! Prior to re-equipping with the Britannias, the Luton based airline was flying holiday travelers around aboard Lockheed Constellations.
Just to add to this, Britannia were for long the largest of the UK holiday airlines, only recently subsumed into the TUI brand, after an interim period as Thomson. Euravia started up with a couple of ex-El Al L-049 Constellations, being owned by the UK's longstanding largest Mediterranean holiday operator, Universal Skytours, long owned by Thomson, who had got fed up with the rickety finances of the early 1960s independent airlines. Then they merged with part of the failing Skyways airline, once the UK's largest charter company of all, and got more Constellations that way, but after a couple of years saw an opportunity when BOAC retired their still fairly new Bristol Britannias and bought a fleet of those, renaming the airline in the process. It was a snap changeover, at the end of the 1964 summer season it was all Euravia Constellations, start of 1965 it was all Britannia (aircraft and name).
Main base was London Luton, but they also had aircraft at Manchester (generally a couple), Birmingham and Newcastle. After a few years they became pioneer holiday flight Boeing 737 users, and must have bought upwards of 100 Boeings over time, all until recently continuing that UK-built airliner name on the side. They also set the style for other holiday operations that, from all their starting points, they ran to the same Mediterranean destination on the same day of the week, when several aircraft would turn up pretty much together - Mahon in the Balearics was traditionally Mondays, and Fuerteventura in the Canaries on Wednesdays. Lesser UK points were served by a "W" arrangement, say out early morning Monday from Birmingham to Mahon, then return to say Bristol, out to Mahon again, and back to Birmingham at the end of the day.
The Skyways takeover brought various charter contracts and indeed some schedules, which Euravia dropped almost straight away, but one very longstanding charter contract Britannia maintained from then was for the UK military, particularly to bases in Germany, where a generation and more of soldiers and airmen knew Britannia as the way to and from home leave. As a result the 737s turned up on various RAF bases like Wildenrath, as well as Berlin. Onetime fellow student, of languages, from my University days, became a translator for the UK Ministry of Defence, and made many trips to Germany in the 1970s-90s. If he was travelling with The Minister and a German official they went in F on British Airways, but if just joining a meeting there the government procurement department would spring into cheapskate mode and he was on a military charter from Luton, whereupon his heart would sink, and he gave me several flamboyant descriptions of the low life on board, packed into 28" pitch charter seating, many of the squaddies (enlisted men) were with their families, and babies were hung in bassinets lengthwise from the overheads who would squawl and bawl through turbulence. And unlike Britannia's holiday flights, being a military charter, anaesthetising drink was NOT served on board.