Details

Picking up from where the Wardair Canada DC-6B film left off in 1965, this film jumps ahead to 1967, as the jet age had arrived with the charter airline taking delivery of its first jet, a Boeing 727-100 aptly registered CF-FUN.

This 1967 flashback features Wardair Canada’s introduction to service of their then brand new Boeing 727-11 (a 727 series -100), which like the DC-6B prop aircraft, was used on affinity charters between Western Canada and Europe, particularly to London’s Gatwick airport.

This opened up a whole new level of onboard service for the fledgeling airline, and they pulled out all the stops when it came to pampering their passengers with hot meals, served on fine china, with the always complementary bar service.

Although much faster than the DC-6B aircraft it replaced, the Boeing 727 did not possess the range to fly between Western Canada (in particular Edmonton) and continental Europe. A technical stop was required for refuelling of the aircraft, so the standard practice was a planned technical stop at Sondrestrom Greenland.

This film presents the passenger experience of flying from Western Canada to London Gatwick, with the stop in Greenland, which was well received by Wardair Canada’s passengers as being an interesting part of the air adventure. For many passengers of the day, a Wardair Canada flight to Europe was their first time back to the old country in decades.

Thus, many of Wardair’s passengers were immigrants to Canada from Europe after World War II. So the market contained a valuable niche of passengers who could not afford the major airlines and were happy to give their business to Wardair. As the saying goes, “the rest is history!”

Wardair went on to become a very highly respected charter airline in the Canadian and European marketplace as it expanded through the 1970s and 1980s, and it moved on to larger airliners including the Boeing 707, 747, Douglas DC-10 and Airbus A310 and A300.

Very special thanks to former Wardair employee Nick Hughes who had this gem of a film salted away in a box for the past 50 years, who provided it to us so we could share it with the JetFlix TV community. Had Nick not unearthed this amazing film, the history would have been lost forever, and we are honoured to have been able to digitize the film for everyone’s enjoyment.