[1][4] Operations moved to Blackbushe Airport in 1952, followed a year later by the launch of secondary scheduled services in association with British European Airways (BEA), from whom Eagle had purchased a large fleet of Vickers Vikings.

[5] Following Eagle's decision to sell the Yorks to rival UK independent Skyways for £160,000, the airline expanded from charter work into scheduled services from its new base at Blackbushe Airport, using Vickers Vikings.

[9] In 1954, the Ministry of Aviation granted Eagle permission to operate a limited programme of a new type of low-fare service that combined air travel and overseas holiday accommodation at a cost substantially below the aggregate of each individual component if purchased separately.

The airline argued that the British economy as a whole would benefit if it was granted permission to offer these fares, as a consequence of additional foreign exchange earnings accruing to the UK Exchequer that resulted from boosting Britain's share of total traffic.

[9][25][26] Eagle along with British United Airways (BUA) — its principal contemporary independent competitor – had successfully lobbied the Government to bring about a change in legislation that had given their state-owned counterparts a virtual monopoly on scheduled services.

It argued that the non-scheduled nature of its business – mainly trooping, ad hoc charters and IT flying – made planning ahead difficult because of extreme seasonality and generally low margins.

Cunard appointed Eagle's original founder, Harold Bamberg, as their new aviation director, hoping that his knowledge of the industry would help them to capture a significant share of the 1 million people that crossed the Atlantic by air in 1960.

The state airline cited its order for 45 Standard and Super VC10 long-haul jets and an earlier ministerial promise not to permit another British competitor on this route in support of its appeal.

[22][23] From 1 October 1960, all-coach DC-6Cs flying the London—Bermuda—Nassau route were replaced with Britannias featuring a 98-seat, three-class layout comprising 14 first-class, 66 economy and 18 Skycoach seats (British residents only).

Following modification they entered service in July 1964 in support of the UK's Blue Steel missile programme ferrying equipment and personnel to the Woomera Test Range in Australia.

[71] Following the suspension of British Eagle's scheduled operations on the three main domestic trunk routes from Heathrow to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast, BUA applied to the ATLB to have these licences transferred to itself.

It argued that its proposed services were primarily intended as domestic feeders for its growing international scheduled and non-scheduled operations at Gatwick, that this was supported by contemporary Government policy giving preference to that airport's development to improve utilisation and enable it to become profitable, and that it would relieve congestion at Heathrow.

The 2008 book "From Barren Rocks...to Living Stones" by Jon Magee records how one of its fleet, a Britannia, intended for a run to the Far East was commandeered at short notice as the emergency escalated.

[35] The simultaneous arrival at Glasgow of BEA's first Comet 4B revenue service and a British Eagle BAC One-Eleven proving flight from Heathrow on 2 May 1966 coincided with the opening of the city's new Abbotsinch Airport.

The brief Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours caused a temporary spike in oil prices while both the military coup in Greece and new Spanish access restrictions to Gibraltar resulted in fewer people visiting these places.

This in turn led to the implementation of a major cost-reduction programme at British Eagle following an estimated drop of 20% in projected summer holiday traffic, as a result of the challenging economic conditions.

British Eagle sought a 15-year licence for a London – New York passenger service to be operated with Boeing 707-320Cs from 1 April 1969 between either Heathrow or Stansted and JFK at an initial frequency of two daily return flights during summer (April—October) and one round-trip per day in winter (November—March).

Caledonian sought transatlantic scheduled services linking its main operating bases at Gatwick and Prestwick in the UK with a number of destinations in the US and Canada, with particular emphasis on the West Coast of the United States to take full advantage of its growing fleet of long-range Boeing 707-320Cs.

[106][108][109][110] Before the route licensing hearings began, the BOT directed the ATLB to prejudge the four contenders' applications in order to concentrate only on those that stood a reasonable chance of success under existing bilateral arrangements.

As far as British Eagle was concerned, the applications seeking licences for scheduled/non-scheduled services to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal and Jamaica with Chicago as an intermediate stop were not heard.

It felt that the independents generally lacked the financial strength to acquire the then latest widebodied and supersonic transport (SST) aircraft for their proposed services and that these airlines had insufficient economies of scale to enable them to compete with BOAC and the American carriers on a level playing field.

[92][108][116][117] In British Eagle's case, the ATLB was impressed with the airline's well-equipped and competent engineering organisation but questioned its ability to finance the envisaged expansion because it considered the company seriously undercapitalised for its existing operations.

[75][120][121][122][123][124][125][126] In addition to taking delivery of the first of a pair of brand-new 707-365Cs ordered directly from Boeing,[127] British Eagle also began operating two second-hand, shorter-fuselage 707-138Bs sourced from Qantas.

The arrival at Nassau of Boeing 707-138B G-AVZZ[128] Endeavour on a pre-inaugural IT flight in February 1968 marked the airline's return to the Bahamian capital six years after Cunard Eagle's transatlantic operations[53] had been absorbed into BOAC-Cunard.

[129][133] By that time, the company's scheduled service network included routes from London Heathrow to Liverpool, Glasgow, Newquay, Luxembourg, Dinard, La Baule, Lourdes, Perpignan, Gerona, Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza, Pisa, Rimini, Stuttgart, Innsbruck, Djerba and Tunis.

[137] At the end of the 1968 summer season, British Eagle issued redundancy notices to 418 employees in London and Liverpool and announced the closure of its Speke maintenance base.

These economy measures were put in place to counter a major business downturn, as a result of a significant decline in the IT market following the introduction of stricter foreign exchange rules for overseas travel, the end of the Far East trooping and Australian migrant contracts in March, and general economic problems.

Poor decisions at senior and executive level, the end of the trooping and migrant contracts and economic difficulties had made British Eagle an increasingly unviable business.

[85][86][147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154][155] In addition to the two former British Eagle One-Eleven 300s[85][86] Dan-Air acquired from Kuwait Finance to complement the ex-American pair of 400 series as well as two former BOAC Comet 4s[155] that were fully employed on the Lunn-Poly/Everyman charters, the other jet aircraft the failed carrier had operated/ordered found new homes relatively quickly.

[151][156] In early 1969, Laker Airways leased the former Qantas Boeing 707-138Bs[128][157] from Kleinwort Benson for Bermudan $8,500 a month to replace Britannias on a new series of transatlantic affinity group charter flights.