• GB Airways

The initiative for the formation of Gibraltar Airways came in the autumn of 1931, largely at the behest of the Colonial British Postmaster, who desired to expedite the movement of mail in the region. To this end he approached George Gaggero, head of Gibraltar’s old-established M H Bland Co, the colony’s principal shipping and trading concern which traced its origins to the 1890s. Gaggero put up the finance and became chairman and managing director of the company.

The first flight of Gibraltar Airways took place on 21 September 1931, carrying 11 letters across the Straits of Gibraltar to nearby Tangier, where a connection was made with the mail flights of Aéropostale between Europe and Africa. Lacking an aerodrome at Gibraltar, the chosen conveyance was a Saro Windhover amphibian, which over the course of the next three months made 222 flights, transporting well over 1,000 letters. This operation continued until 3 January 1932, and was only halted after the discovery of corrosion in the Windover’s wing roots. Thereafter, the enterprise remained dormant until the latter part of the Second World War, by which time Gibraltar had gained an airport. Gibraltar Airways became local agent for BOAC, which by then was operating services from the UK via Lisbon. The airline was revived in August 1947, after BEA obtained a 51% interest and supplied several DH Dragon Rapides to re-start services over the sole route to Morocco. In 1949, having carried almost 12,000 passengers and 15 tons of mail and cargo, encouraging results prompted endeavours to expand the network. During the following year additional services were opened to Tetuan, Malaga and Seville, the first flight on this latter route being flown by Dragon Rapide, G-AGEE, on 2 June 1950.

Unfortunately, these ventures proved grossly uneconomic and closed after only three months. By 1953 the ageing Rapides could no longer cope with the traffic volume and were replaced by a BEA Pionair Dakota, rotated monthly via a scheduled run from London through Biarritz; the first service was flown on 5 October 1953 by G-AGHP. Such was the success of this move, that a trading loss of £603 was turned into a handsome profit of £4,127 for 1954. Late in 1958, with the gradual withdrawal of BEA’s Pionair fleet, Gibair, as it was now known, became the beneficiary of more modern equipment in the shape of a Vickers Viscount that additionally operated a service to Madrid. However, this was not to be the end of Dakota operations, for in 1963 BEA had re-purchased G-AMFV from Cambrian Airways specifically for dry-lease to Gibair. Plying the short hop across to Tangier, together with a brief twice-weekly extension to Casablanca in late 1966, Gibair’s trusty Dakota came to be regarded with affection by Gibraltar’s residents, acquiring the nickname Yogi Bair after some local humourist had chalked the letters YO on its fuselage.

After seven years of faithful service, G-AMFV was finally retired on 30 March 1970. Left with the sole Viscount to operate the 45-mile hop to Tangier was hardly an economic proposition and, in order to improve utilisation during otherwise slack periods, the aircraft was chartered to Royal Air Maroc for domestic services during 1971-2. After BEA’s holding passed to the newly-formed British Airways in 1975, Gibair began operating flights under its own name to London, employing HS Tridents wet-leased from its majority shareholder. From April 1979 these services were undertaken by Britannia Airways Boeing 737-200s flying out of London-Gatwick, Gibair’s new London terminus. Following the loss of the Viscount after a nose-wheel collapse on landing at Tangier in November 1988, the name of Yogi Bair resurfaced to be officially adopted for a BN Trislander obtained in May 1989. For the next couple of years this aircraft operated the Tangier shuttle on what the Guinness Book of Records billed as ‘the world’s fastest intercontinental service’, taking under 20 minutes to fly between Europe and Africa.

The change to the modern title, GB Airways, was made in March 1981 and in 1989 the airline became UK-based to take advantage of the changes brought about by the setting up of British Airway’s European Division at Gatwick. Thus by 1990, in addition to its traditional North African destinations, GB Airways was also serving Tunis and Funchal Madeira from Gatwick, while Manchester became its second UK city. Alongside air services, airport-handling agencies were operated both in both Morocco and Spain, together with the establishment of some 30 travel agencies throughout the Iberian mainland.

In February 1995 GB Airways became a British Airways code-share franchise partner, coincident with the acquisition of the remaining 49% shareholding by the Bland Group. Now with a fleet of seven B737s, two of which were ex-British Airways’ 400 Series models, additional routes to Murcia and Valencia were opened. The move to franchise operations brought about a significant increase in passenger traffic, almost doubling in the year ending March 1996 to some 815,000. With the reorganisation of British Airways’ operations from Gatwick, GB Airways gained additional routes to Faro, Oporto and Malaga, along with a daily service to Malta. By the time of its tenth anniversary of becoming UK-based, GB Airways was serving 16 destinations in Spain and North Africa. Closer fleet commonality with British Airways saw an order for 10 aircraft of the Airbus A320 generic family in November 1998, together with five further options, designed to completely replace the Boeing fleet by February 2004. On 26 May 2000 the airline’s first new Airbus entered service on the heavily trafficked trunk route between London, Faro and Malaga.

In January 2001 the airline’s cargo operation was divorced from BA World Cargo and placed in the hands of the Airline Management Group under the GB Airways Cargo banner, part of the initiative resulting in the airline becoming one of the first carriers to adopt the UK’s passport for pets scheme. As British Airways’ largest franchise operator, latterly headquartered in Gatwick’s historic refurbished Beehive terminal, by 2005 GB Airways was serving 28 destinations in the Iberian peninsular, the Canary and Balearic Islands, Madeira, Spain, Greece and north-west Africa, with a fleet of 13 A320/321 aircraft. From 16 May 2005 the airline began operating from a new base at Manchester with flights to five Mediterranean vacation resorts, while during the following winter GB Airways further diversified its markets with new services from Gatwick to Innsbruck and Sharm el Sheikh/Hurghada on the Egyptian Red Sea.

With its British Airways franchise due to expire at the end of March 2008, at the end of October 2007 GB Airways announced that it had reached agreement for the airline’s sale to easyJet for £103.5m, a deal giving easyJet 24% of available slots at Gatwick. Heathrow slots did not form part of the takeover and were sold separately to other airlines for an estimated £100m. At this stage GB Airways was carrying some 2.8m passengers annually, generating £2.6m in pre-tax profits on gross revenues of £35m. Following expiry of the British Airways code share partnership, from 29 March 2008 the fleet was transferred to easyJet.