Help identify the significance of the flight

[Eviand]

Does anyone know anything about a company called AIR CHARTER LTD., LONDON? I have a photograph of two men (one, my Grandfather) standing at the side of a plane (with only CHARTER LTD., LONDON showing on the side of the plane) with the 'cargo' doors open. The message on the right door says "FLUG, 2500, AIR CHARTER, BERLIN - HAMBURG".

Does anyone know where AIR CHARTER LTD., LONDON operated from and to, which years etc. I know absolutely nothing. How 'big' was AIR CHARTER in terms of employees.

Failed to download the photo - too large.

I do hope that someone can help.

Regards,
Eviand

[loobylou]

There is information on wikipedia which will be of interest to you I'm sure. It's possiblr that your grandad had something to do with the 2nd Berlin airlift.

[Jan1954]

Hello Eviand,

Do you have any ideas as to when the photograph could have been taken? There is a reference in TNA to Air Charter Ltd, but just covering the years 1952 - 1953. However, I do not know if that is the same company to which you refer.

[Coromandel]

There are many references to Air Charter Ltd in 'Flight' magazine which is all freely available on the Flightglobal Archive site. Unfortunately the online search tool is very basic, but Google comes to the rescue: try a search such as the one below

"Air Charter Ltd" site:http://www.
flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/

(but without the line break, which I had to put in to stop the website address being turned into a clickable link)

Though we can't see your photo, I'm guessing it might be the same as one posted here:

http://www.
pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-347929.html

where there are some very techie answers. They don't all seem to agree, but from what I can gather it seems likely the photo was taken at Tempelhof, Berlin?

[Eviand]

Though we can't see your photo, I'm guessing it might be the same as one posted here:

http://www.
pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-347929.html

Thanks for all your contributions. You're right Coromandel about the photos, I'd forgotten that I'd posted those at the above site. I was wondering who may hold records of employee lists, to put some evidence to the photo as it were.

Eviand

[Coromandel]

From the Air Charters page on Wikipedia I've tried to follow the complex trail of airline mergers/takeovers and have ended up (whether correctly or not I'm not sure!) at British Caledonian and finally British Airways. It may therefore be worth contacting the British Airways Heritage Collection, in case they know of any Air Charters records:

http://www.
britishairways.com/travel/history-and-heritage/public/en_gb

[StintonLomas]

Hi
Reading up on that wiki page it would seem to me to be the occassion of the 2,500 th flight (FLUG) between Berlin and Hamburg as part of the second Little Berlin Airlift.
That aircraft appears to be an Avro York judging by the visible fin,, the aircraft in the background of thw other photo
Could well be late '52 or early '53 depending on how long it took to build up to 70 flights pw.
If both photos were taken around the same time Laker bought his first Freighter (the foreground aircraft) in Feb '53

[geneius]

Tried to get onto London Gazette ( the site appears to be 'down') to see if anything has been reported on the company