Last year (2019) budget airlines carried a soaring 927 million passengers worldwide with 153.7 million passengers to and from the UK alone, but forty years ago things were very different. While ‘affluent’ passengers were being pampered by the likes of British Caledonian, British Airways and Pan American, the rest of us could only dream of joining the jetset until Sir Freddie Laker revolutionised the skies with the first ‘no-frills’ airline – Laker Airways commencing services throughout Europe in 1966.

Freddie Laker was a British aviation entrepreneur born in Canterbury in 1922, founding Laker Airways.

I first heard of Laker Airways when I was just a child in the mid-eighties. Laker Airways flew from London Gatwick and Manchester. From the Autumn of 1977 Laker Airways’ long-haul arm ‘Skytrain’ was launched with just one route; London Gatwick to New York JFK. There were no advanced bookings and ‘online’ services were still at least twenty-five years away. Passengers had to queue up at the airport for their ticket. The low priced fares to cross the Atlantic made Sir Freddie one of the first ‘celebrity businessmen’ of our time. Skytrain made a profit within its first year and Sir Freddie placed orders for more wide bodied DC-10 planes that were the preferred option for Skytrain, plus more routes were soon added to Florida and California.

As Sir Freddie’s airline grew so did his confidence but not everyone was impressed namely the ‘big boy’ airlines. Skytrain launched well and was operating successfully but Sir Freddie didn’t want to stop there. He could see opportunities with an outlook of launching Skytrain into a global ‘no frills’ airline.

Laker Airways doubled in size in just five short years adding more planes and carrying over two million passengers – this put Laker Airways on a collision course with its rivals. The eighties arrived and recession hit The UK. Skytrain looked dangerously over stretched. The worsening exchange rate and fuel prices rising meant that Laker faced spiralling costs at the same time as revenues were falling and being an airline built on low fares this made it particularly hard to raise prices to compensate the shortfall.

Sir Freddie had invested money into the airlines expansion that meant it had very little left in reserve. Laker’s competitors had cut their prices on all of Sir Freddie’s routes. By 1982, the bank called in its multi-million pound overdraft. The airline went bankrupt on 5th February 1982 and Sir Freddie’s dreams were shattered and those of the staff and passengers. Laker Airways fell bankrupt with debts of over £270 million, making it the biggest corporate failure in British history, at that time.

Sir Freddie soon waged war against the likes of British Airways, United, Lufthansa, KLM and Pan American calling his demise as a ‘dirty tricks campaign’ by his rivals who joined a common cause to put him out of business.

Laker Airways operated from 1966 to 1982.

References:-

Statista.

Investopedia.

Instagram: #lakerairways.

Airliner World Online