[12][13][14][5][15][16] Thomson, de la Haye and three associates started Caledonian Airways from scratch with an initial investment of £54,000 raised from institutional investors on both sides of the Atlantic, many of which had a "Scottish connection".

As the initial driver of branding, the famous Caledonian customer service and route expansion, de la Haye is generally recognized as the brainchild behind the airline’s early years and subsequent success, as described in a lengthy obituary in The Times.

A close friend of Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines) he recognized very early on that diverse fleets incur huge costs and was a strong proponent of keeping it simple.

[2][23][24] Two Caledonian Airways Douglas DC-7Cs appeared at the Biggin Hill Air Fair in May 1963; one to carry travel trade invitees on a special flight around the English south coast; the other to be viewed by the public while on static display at the airfield.

The company also sought to attract customers by providing an inflight service that was superior to what most other contemporary charter airlines offered, including complimentary meals, drinks and free overnight bags.

[25] On 20 May 1963, the US Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), with Chairman and Managing Director John de la Haye as lead negotiator, granted Caledonian a foreign [air] carrier permit for a three-year period under Section 402 of the US Federal Aviation Act.

[24][37] Caledonian's transatlantic growth strategy focused on taking advantage of strong ethnic ties of overseas Scottish communities in North America to the land of their ancestors and an obscure International Air Transport Association (IATA) resolution dating from 1953.

Confirmation by the White House of the CAB's decision to let Caledonian fly US-originating charter passengers to Britain made it at the time the only airline permitted to cater to the IT market on both sides of the Atlantic.

Over the coming years, additional examples were sourced from BOAC and Canadian Pacific Airlines, enabling the company to continue expanding its worldwide charter business.

GUS were the owners of the Global travel organisation, a leading contemporary UK tour operator that contracted a growing share of its flying business to Caledonian.

[66][69][70] The Board of Trade (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 before the route licensing hearings could begin.

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.

[10][28][48][66][81][82][83] In Caledonian's case, the ATLB found that despite having a dedicated North American sales force and its own ground handling operation at John F. Kennedy Airport, the airline's lack of any kind of scheduled service experience and its almost total reliance on Sabena's and Aviation Traders'[nb 10] engineering support counted against granting it a scheduled service licence for one of the most competitive air markets in the world.

[17][84][85] Secondary factors for the ATLB's rejection of Caledonian's applications included the delay in the introduction of Concorde and the non-availability within the envisaged timeframe of widebodied aircraft that were smaller and carried a lower price tag than the Boeing 747, which would have made them better suited to the type of operation proposed.

When Caledonian's senior management began evaluating competing state-of-the-art jet aircraft types as potential replacements for the Britannia in its long-haul role in the mid-1960s, the Boeing 707 320C series was favoured because of its superior range and payload compared with its contemporary rivals.

[55][87][88][89] To avoid paying the 14% tax the UK Government had imposed on imported, new foreign aircraft to protect competing British models,[90][91] Caledonian needed to persuade the BOT that there was no equivalent home-grown alternative.

[90] However, the BOT was unwilling to grant Caledonian the requested tax exemption[89][92] and was instead assisting Vickers in selling it the Super VC10, the stretched version of the original "standard" VC10 and Britain's answer to the all-American 707 and DC-8.

Apart from its insufficient range to fly non-stop from the UK to the US West Coast with a viable payload, significantly smaller cargo capacity and lack of passenger/freighter convertibility, the Super VC10 was also heavier than the 707.

The BOT however continued to insist that irrespective of Caledonian's specific requirements, the 707 and Super VC10 were equivalent and, based on this assessment, refused the airline's application for an import duty waiver.

To avoid having an expensive, new jet aircraft sit idly on the ground in the absence of a timely resolution, the airline's senior management put in place a contingency plan to transfer the 707 training programme to Shannon Airport as the BOT had no jurisdiction over the Republic of Ireland.

In the event, the contingency plan was not activated as a compromise was reached in early December 1967 that resulted in the BOT granting Caledonian's request for an import duty exemption.

This permitted the airline to import the aircraft into the UK free of duty, as long as non-stop sectors outside the Super VC10's economically viable range accounted for a significant share of its operations.

[109] By the time Caledonian acquired BUA from British and Commonwealth (B&C) in late November 1970, it operated a fleet of eleven state-of-the-art jet aircraft comprising seven Boeing 707-320Cs and four BAC One-Eleven 500s[105] and had more than 1,000 employees.

[9][112][113][114] One of the Edwards report's recommendations was the creation of a financially and managerially sound, so-called Second Force private sector airline[115][116][117][118][119] to operate a viable network of short- and long-haul scheduled and non-scheduled services.

The "Second Force" was to be assisted in attaining critical mass by way of a limited route transfer from the corporations,[115][116][117] both of which accounted for more than 90% of all UK scheduled air transport capacity in the late 1960s.

[135] Roy Mason, at the time the President of the Board of Trade, gave the Government's preliminary approval to BOAC's proposed takeover of BUA,[115][136][137][138][123][139] on the understanding that there were no realistic prospects of a merger with another independent airline as recommended in the Edwards report.

[121][141] This opened the way for Caledonian to make a successful counter bid for BUA, seeing off competition from that airline's former managing directors Freddie Laker and Alan Bristow and from Channel Airways chairman Jack Jones.

During the 1970s and '80s, British Caledonian became the UK's largest independent, international scheduled airline, with an extensive global route network serving over 40 destinations in around 25 countries on five continents.

A Douglas DC-7C named Star of Robbie Burns (registration: G-ARUD) operating the Douala—Lisbon sector of Caledonian Airways flight 153 (a Lourenço Marques – Luxembourg charter on behalf of Trans Africa Air Coach of London[148]) crashed shortly after a night takeoff from Douala Airport's runway 12, killing all 111 occupants (ten crew and 101 passengers[149]).

[148] The commission of inquiry probing the accident determined that the evidence at the crash site seemed to suggest that a jammed elevator spring tab mechanism prevented the aircraft from attaining sufficient height to clear the obstacles in the runway end's vicinity.