Freddie Laker

Freddie Laker was one of the pioneers of modern passenger air travel. He was born in England in 1922, and from an early age he was involved with aircraft. He was an aircraft engineer in the Second World War and also learnt to fly.

Laker's business ability appeared soon after the war ended. In the Berlin airlift of 1948 he was one of a number of businessmen who bought and chartered planes to take food and supplies to the people of Berlin when the city was blockaded by the Russians.

This early entrepreneurial experience led Freddie Laker to increased business activity in the 1950s. He was one of a number of businessmen who helped the rapid expansion of air travel, using recent developments in aircraft technology. In 1955, for example, he set up an air service carrying passengers and cars across the Channel between England and France.

It was in the 1960s and 1970s that the real growth in charter air travel happened, as more and more people wanted to go on package holidays. Laker was at the forefront of this. He ran British United Airways from 1960 to 1965, and Laker Airways from 1966 to 1982. His main achievement was to set up companies which were independent of the big state corporations, and to offer cheap flights for thousands of people. Perhaps the best example of this was the Skytrain passenger service to the USA which started a price war on the transatlantic routes from 1977 to 1982. Freddie Laker helped to make air travel a realistic and fairly cheap possibility for many travellers and tourists.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-08