Silver City Airways
The following year, Silver City leased its first Bristol Freighter, moved its base to Blackbushe and participated in the airlift of Hindu and Muslim refugees between Pakistan and India.
[15][16][17][18][19] By the mid-1950s, Silver City had become the biggest air cargo carrier in the United Kingdom while annual passenger numbers at its "Ferryfield" base had reached ¼ of a million.
[20][24][25][26] By 1960, Silver City's 40,000 annual cross-Channel flights transported 220,000 passengers and 90,000 vehicles while network-wide freight haulage reached 135,000 tons a year.
[7][27] Unsustainable losses as a result of the loss of the Libyan oil industry support flight contract, increasing competition from roll-on/roll-off ferries and the lack of suitable replacements for the ageing Bristol Freighters resulted in growing financial difficulties, culminating in Silver City's takeover by British United Airways (BUA) holding company Air Holdings in 1962.
British Aviation Services (BAS), an early post-World War II airline holding company and air transport operator, became one of Silver City's shareholders, initially taking a 10% stake.
The airline's initial fleet comprised four ex-military Douglas Dakotas and three Avro Lancastrians, the 13-seater civil version of the Lancaster Mark 3 bomber.
On short journeys, the authorities granted Silver City dispensation to raise the limit on the maximum number of passengers it could carry from 28 to 52 to airlift as many people as quickly as possible.
[3] Also in 1947, Silver City leased its first Bristol Freighter from the manufacturer to replace one of the four Dakotas that had originally been allocated to the repatriation airlift in the Indian subcontinent.
Like the Dakotas it had operated on that airlift, Silver City was given dispensation to increase the maximum number of passengers it could carry on the Bristol Freighter above the normal limit of 32.
Actual loads on this aircraft type often exceeded 100 passengers per flight, resulting in a total of 1,105 evacuees and their belongings being transported aboard Silver City's single Freighter over a period of nine days.
Powell realised that the Bristol Freighter could be adapted to fly car owners with their vehicles from Britain to Continental Europe and the Channel Islands.
[4] On 7 July 1948, a Silver City Bristol Freighter operated the first cross-Channel air ferry service, between Lympne near Folkestone in Kent and Le Touquet on France's northern Côte d'Opale coast, with good road connections from and to London and Paris respectively.
These figures represented a significant increase over the previous year when only 178 cars and their occupants, as well as some motorcycles and bicycles had been carried until the end of the season in September.
[6] In February 1949, Silver City established a French sister airline headquartered in Paris to operate vehicle ferry flights from Le Touquet Airport.
[34] The success of Silver City's Lympne — Le Touquet air ferry service resulted in subsequent introduction of additional routes across the English Channel and to other parts of the United Kingdom.
[35][36][37] Over the coming years, Silver City pursued a policy of continuous fare reductions to fill the additional capacity on its growing air ferry network.
[10][15] BAS's takeover of Air Kruise, an independent charter and pleasure flight operator based at Lympne, in March 1953 brought a fleet of all-passenger de Havilland Dragon Rapides[38] and Douglas Dakotas.
Interim moves to Southend and West Malling were followed by final selection of an area covered by grazing land on the edge of the Dungeness shingle desert on the Kentish coast close to the village of Lydd.
Following his tour of the airport's facilities, the Duke boarded one of Silver City's scheduled air ferry services to Le Touquet on Superfreighter G-AMWD.
[20] That year also saw Silver City become involved in supporting the oil industry in Libya, flying geologists and supplying desert camps with a fleet of DC-3s and a single DC-2 from bases at Tripoli and Benghazi.
It recorded more aircraft movements during the peak summer months than any other airport in the UK, and only Heathrow and Northolt were busier in terms of annual air freight volume.
[20][23][45] In May of the same year, the crew of a Silver City Dakota made the first sighting of the Lady Be Good, a WW II bomber that had disappeared in 1943 while returning from an operation to Naples, in the Libyan Desert.
[citation needed] In 1959, Britavia transferred its five-strong Hermes 4A fleet to sister airline Silver City, as a consequence of the loss of a trooping contract to Eagle.
In return, Silver City transferred three of its Superfreighters to CAT along with the traffic rights to operate the Ferryfield — Le Touquet and Bournemouth (Hurn) — Cherbourg routes.
[7][27][29] Having been outbid by Belgium's flag carrier Sabena for the Libyan oil industry support flight contract that year, Silver City's losses became unsustainable.
[28][49] The airline's long-standing policy of stimulating the market by continuously reducing fares had resulted in uneconomic yields in the absence of a corresponding reduction in costs.
[30][46] The Hermes fleet had continued in operation serving several UK airports, mainly on inclusive tour flights, with the last example being retired from service in late 1962.
Bristol 170 Mark 21E Freighter registration G-AICS operating a charter flight from the Isle of Man to Manchester on behalf of Manx Airlines crashed in bad weather on Winter Hill near Bolton, Lancashire, destroying the aircraft and killing 35 of 39 passengers (all three crew members survived).
[50][53][54] The aircraft was chartered by the Isle of Man motor trade to take members to the Exide battery factory in Clifton Junction, and it hit the northeast slope of Winter Hill in thick fog at a height of approximately 1,460 feet (450 m) and burst into flames, as a result of a navigational error committed by the first officer.
[57] Air Holdings' lack of success with its German cattle charters led to a decision to put the aircraft up for sale in October and to close down the airline the following month, with the Silver City name being de-activated by the end of the year.
