The company was immensely successful but ran into financial difficulties and in 1972 was taken over by its major supplier of air travel, Court Line.
Destinations included Spain, Portugal, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece as well as Mediterranean cruises and a wide range of short tours to European cities and wine regions.
Always a pioneer, Clarksons installed the very first real-time computer system in the western hemisphere,[citation needed] which handled bookings, flights, and hotels all in one.
[1] Flight International added that the UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), headed at the time by Lord Boyd-Carpenter, must bear some responsibility for CourtLine's and Clarksons' collapse and asked questions such as how interlocking companies were related.
Clarksons held an Air Travel Organisers' Licensing (ATOL) licence and were therefore theoretically covered by their insurance bond.
[3][4] The Trade Minister, at the time, Tony Benn assured customers that none would lose money as a result of the collapse, perhaps mindful that a second General Election in 1974 was likely, as indeed it turned out.
[1] On Friday evening, 3 July 1970, a Clarksons-chartered Dan Air de Havilland Comet, registration G-APDN, en route from Manchester to Barcelona deviated from the intended course and crashed into high ground at the Montseny Massif, Girona, in northern Spain.