First and foremost, thank you all for your patience with my laggardly response time to your responses. This has been one of those days, starting with no internet this morning. Next, my bus broke down up on Polychrome Mountain this afternoon, delaying my return another three and a half hours. It should be noted that yours truly has suffered a grand total of just two breakdowns to my buses over the past fourteen years and then two in the past five days. Go figure. Anyway, thanks also for your vigorous response to these questions. Looks like I'm gonna be up late tonight...
29. (1987) You’ll be flying from Dubai to London next month to commence studies at the University of Greenwich at Kent. You love to fly and the Dubai to London route is served by eight international airlines operating just about every wide bodied airliner imaginable. You’ve been looking forward to a flight aboard Airbus’ 5 year old A310 and thankfully there’s a single airline that operates the only nonstop A310 service between Dubai and London’s Gatwick Airport. Identify the airline.
Per KT550:
Emirates Airline. LGW was their first U.K. destination.
You are correct, Sir! Here's the schedule... Emirates EK 001 Dubai (DXB) 800a-1130 London (LGW) A310 Daily
Per WHBM:
Alas, I must report that the U of Greenwich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Greenwich did not exist until 1992, and furthermore is not in Kent, but in Inner London. How do I know this ? Written as one of its former alumni (1989-92) where I got my MBA. Indeed we started when it was Thames Polytechnic, but ended up rebadged as a university. Their business school was then in Wapping, near Tower Bridge, an old converted dockside industrial building. It's been converted again now, and is a block of expensive apartments. Meanwhile, if you ever visit Greenwich the splendid old Naval college alongside the Cutty Sark is now their main centre, probably the most architecturally spectacular campus in Britain.
The course was part time, evenings, and most of us either worked in the City of London or lived nearby. I recall one guy who visited Paris frequently. This was in the early days of also nearby London City airport, when Paris was served with DHC-7s by two airlines, Brymon (aligned with BA) and Eurocity Express (part of British Midland). Classes started at 6.30pm, he had been in Paris for the day, and at apparently considerable extra expense to his employers was booked back on a 5pm flight into LCY, instead of to Heathrow. He went out to CDG that evening, to find his flight was … cancelled. He was rebooked on the other carrier, but they went from a different CDG terminal, he spent more than an hour just getting between them, and walked in to class more than halfway through the evening. Needless to say his account of it all absorbed all the time in the pub afterwards.
Meanwhile, back at the question, I'll go along with the Emirates A310 as well. It must have been in this year, 1987, that I visited a business customer south of London, an Australian expat who I met up with in the car park, just as the A310 from this upstart new airline passed low overhead running in to Gatwick. I described the new airline and he told how his Australian brother had a job as a dentist in Dubai where he was "going to make a fortune". Don't know if he did, but the airline certainly achieved it. I think London was their first mainstream route. At this time Dubai's principal airline was Gulf Air, which ran quite a substantial operation from the various points into London with Tristars, but had a habit of linking two or even three points before setting off for Europe, which hacked the various rulers of the UAE who were all minority shareholders in the airline at the time, and who felt they deserved better than routing Dubai-Doha-Bahrain-London. Gulf Air didn't react sufficiently, and the rest is history. Gulf were a notably British carrier, and long had been, their fleet was even registered in Britain, including their first Tristars, until the end of the 1970s, and all the management and pilots were British expats.
Dear WHBM ~ You are such a gentleman! Though you would be well within your rights to call me out as a factually illiterate cretin of the lowest order, you instead kindly present the facts as they really are and then go on to provide a wealth of superb color commentary and detail. I am truly in your debt sir, though due to certain shortcomings in background and education along with a propensity to overindulge in cheap whiskey, I cannot guarantee that future gaffes will not be occasionally forthcoming. Thank you again for your polite patience ^ This thread is many times better for your participation in it ^
Last edited by Seat 2A; Jul 14, 2019 at 12:39 am