... and a Happy New Year to both contributors and readers here. It was good to see on New Year's Day that at London City airport Cityjet's BAe 146/RJs continue to roll in and out among the damp, greyness and low cloud here, Another year for them, hopefully. In passing, the brand new Bombardier C-series that Swiss now run into here are the quietest at the airport. They have a notable low howl on departure which means I can, just, identify them, even from inside the house.
I think this refers to Trinidad & Tobago Air Service (TTAS), government-owned despite the Trinidad government already owning BWIA. They set out to connect the two namesake islands of the territory, but extended elsewhere as well. I think 1976 was their first year, in which case they had a hotch-potch of a leased Finnair DC9-50, and a couple of DC-6Bs, no less, taken from the Miami charter pool. Must have been one of the last passenger services that a DC-6 started. They then ordered no less than 7 brand new Hawker 748s, delivered a year or two later, which while a more appropriate aircraft for the short shuttle flight were surely beyond the capacity required. A further short while, some of the 748s leased out elsewhere, and within a year or two the operation was folded into BWIA, who carried on with the 748 fleet for quite some time.