UTA – Union de Transports Aériens

If you flew from France to Abidjan, Nouméa or Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, you were often not sitting with Air France but with UTA. The Union de Transports Aériens was the country’s big private long-haul airline – with DC-8s, DC-10s and Boeing 747s, a network reaching to the South Seas and house colors that combined two predecessors. Here you will learn how UTA came about, which aircraft it flew, what happened in the bombing of Flight 772 and how to place old UTA shots properly.

UTA at a glance

UTA was a historic French airline, founded on October 1, 1963. It emerged from two companies that had been working closely together since the early 1950s: UAT (Union Aéromaritime de Transport), founded in 1949, and TAI (Transports Aériens Intercontinentaux) from 1946. Behind UAT stood the shipping company Chargeurs Réunis, which kept control of UTA until 1990.

While the state-owned Air France served the network to North America, many parts of Europe and North Africa, and Air Inter took over domestic traffic, UTA had its own territories: West and Central Africa, the South Pacific with New Caledonia and French Polynesia, parts of Asia and the US West Coast. This division of labor was politically intended – and shaped French aviation for almost three decades.

At the start, UTA employed around 4,900 people and took over 35 aircraft from its predecessors, of which only six were jets. The long-haul fleet itself stayed manageable over the years: usually a good dozen widebody and long-range jets, which on many routes flew with stopovers and comparatively infrequently.

Codes and callsign

• IATA code UT: appeared in flight numbers, on tickets and on departure boards. Flight 772 was therefore “UT 772”.
• ICAO code UTA: identified the airline in the air traffic control flight plan.
• Callsign UTA: Crews simply checked in on the radio with the three letters – a rare case in which name, ICAO code and callsign are identical.
• Registration: Most aircraft were registered in France and carried an F- registration. A few aircraft flew with a US registration, including the DC-10 of Flight 772 with N54629.

How differently airlines choose their callsigns is shown in the article on airline callsigns and their history.

History: from UAT and TAI to UTA

The predecessors

UAT was the airline of Chargeurs Réunis, a shipping company that had grown big with ships to Africa – the step into the air was an obvious one. TAI flew from Paris toward Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Because the two networks complemented each other, they cooperated early on and in 1961 decided on the merger, which was completed in October 1963.

Jets for Africa

As early as November 1963, UTA deployed the Douglas DC-8 on routes to West Africa, for example to Lagos, Accra, Monrovia and Freetown. From 1965, the Series 30 DC-8s were refitted with more fuel-efficient turbofan engines, becoming the Series 50. Later the stretched “Super Sixty” versions DC-8-62 and -63 were added.

Africa became the core business: with up to 25 destinations, UTA had the largest Africa network of any European airline. The most important route was Paris–Abidjan, flown daily in both directions. On many African routes, UTA worked with the multinational airline Air Afrique and shared the revenue.

Base change to Roissy

Until 1974, Paris Le Bourget was UTA’s home. After that the airline moved to the new Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. Le Bourget is now a business aviation airport and the site of the air show – more on the page about Paris Le Bourget Airport.

Region	Destinations (selection, at various times)	Significance
West Africa	Abidjan, Lagos, Accra, Lomé, Cotonou, Bamako, Ouagadougou, Niamey	Core business, Paris–Abidjan as the strongest route
Central and Southern Africa	Douala, Libreville, Brazzaville, Kinshasa, N’Djamena, Bangui, Johannesburg, Harare	Dense network, often with stopovers
South Pacific	Nouméa, Papeete, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne	Link to the French overseas territories
Asia	Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Tokyo	Stopovers and own markets
North America	Los Angeles, San Francisco	Pacific link, also Paris–San Francisco from 1986

The fleet through the years

In just under three decades UTA flew a colorful mix that can be roughly divided into three eras: piston aircraft from the predecessors, the DC-8 era and the widebody jets.

Era	Types	Use
1963 to the early 1970s	Douglas DC-4, DC-6, DC-7, Beech 18	Legacy of UAT and TAI, quickly retired
from 1963	Douglas DC-8 (Series 30/50, later -62 and -63)	First jets, Africa and long-haul
1960s/1970s	Sud Aviation Caravelle 10R	Medium-haul
1970s	Boeing 737-200, Fokker F27	Regional service in the Pacific from Nouméa La Tontouta
from the 1970s	McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30	Backbone of long-haul
from around 1980	Boeing 747-200 (also Combi and freighter)	Widebody capacity and cargo
from 1983	Boeing 747-300 (747-3B3)	Flagship of the 1980s
from 1989/90	Boeing 747-400 (747-4B3)	Last new generation before the merger

The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 was UTA’s workhorse. In 1978 there were six DC-10-30s in the fleet, and in 1986 again six. To ease its introduction, UTA joined the KSSU maintenance consortium, in which KLM, SAS and Swissair maintained their widebody aircraft together. The manufacturer was McDonnell Douglas.

UTA was early with the Boeing 747. The airline ordered the Boeing 747-300 with its stretched upper deck in August 1981 as the second customer after Swissair; the first aircraft arrived in March 1983. UTA later had two older 747-200s converted to the stretched upper deck. In 1986 the fleet consisted of three 747-300s, two 747-200 Combis, two 747-200 freighters and six DC-10-30s. Around 1989/90 the Boeing 747-400 finally joined the fleet. How the versions differ is shown in the guide Recognizing the Boeing 747-100 to 747-8; the full story of the Jumbo is told in The history of the Boeing 747.

In 1987 UTA also ordered six Airbus A340-300s – the first Airbus order in the company’s history. The aircraft were no longer delivered to UTA, because by then the airline had been absorbed into Air France.

Accidents and incidents before 1989

UTA flew for a long time without catastrophic accidents involving its own jets, but it did experience several serious events:

• October 2, 1964: A UTA Douglas DC-6B crashed into a mountain in the Sierra Nevada near Granada. All 80 people on board died.
• March 10, 1984: In N’Djamena, explosive devices destroyed a DC-8-63 freighter on the ground. There were no fatalities.
• March 16, 1985: A Boeing 747-300 burned out during cabin cleaning at Charles de Gaulle. Nobody was injured.

The 1984 attack in N’Djamena shows how heavily UTA was drawn into the political conflicts of Central Africa – five years before the disaster came.

Flight 772: the bombing over the Ténéré

The flight

On September 19, 1989, the DC-10-30 N54629 was operating as UT 772 from Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo to Paris Charles de Gaulle, with a stopover in N’Djamena in Chad. The aircraft had been built in 1973, the 125th DC-10 off the production line, powered by three General Electric CF6-50 engines.

At 1:13 p.m., Flight 772 took off from N’Djamena. About 46 minutes later, at around 35,000 feet over the Ténéré desert in Niger, an explosive device in a suitcase detonated in the forward cargo hold. The DC-10 broke apart in the air, and the wreckage spread over a huge area about 450 kilometers east of Agadez.

The largest groups among the victims came from France, the Republic of the Congo and Chad. Flight 772 was the deadliest accident in UTA’s history and ranks among the worst disasters in French civil aviation.

Investigation and trial

An investigation commission concluded that the bomb was in a container in the forward cargo hold – most likely in luggage loaded in Brazzaville. The French examining magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière followed the trail to the Libyan intelligence service. The motive is believed to be French support for Chad in its conflict with Libya.

In 1999 a Paris court convicted six Libyans in absentia, among them Abdullah Senussi, the number two of the Libyan intelligence service. Libya extradited no one. In 2004 French relatives accepted compensation via a Libyan foundation; US families rejected this offer, sued in a US court and won a judgment in the billions in 2008.

Takeover and merger with Air France

At the end of the 1980s UTA wanted to grow: in 1986 it launched the Paris–San Francisco route – the first route on which it competed directly with Air France from Paris. In the same year, however, it lost its monopoly on the Paris–Papeete route to Minerve, which later became part of AOM French Airlines. A bitter dispute over lower salaries at the charter subsidiary Aéromaritime temporarily crippled both companies from the end of 1988 to October 1989 and thwarted plans for a European feeder network.

In January 1990, Air France bought the majority of UTA from the Chargeurs group. According to a report by the French Senate, Air France acquired a package of 54.58 percent of UTA’s shares for 3.8 billion francs. The clincher: UTA itself held a good third of Air Inter, so Air France also gained control of the domestic carrier at a stroke. The EC Commission also looked into the combination.

The actual merger followed two years later. Since the beginning of 1992, Air France had already been operating UTA’s business under lease. A decree of December 18, 1992, then approved a reverse merger: legally, UTA absorbed the old Air France, and the new company carried on under the name Air France. At the end of 1992, the UTA livery disappeared for good. You can find today’s group structure on the page about Air France-KLM.

How to recognize UTA shots

UTA has been history for over 30 years. Good photos are still common, though, because the widebody jets stood out at many airports. Here is how to place them:

Today you find traces of the era mainly in the museum: the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace in Le Bourget lies exactly where UTA was at home until 1974. If you spot at the airport today, the guide to plane spotting at Paris Charles de Gaulle will help you – and for old slides, the guide Recognizing vintage aircraft.

Common mix-ups

• Equating UTA with Air France – until 1990 UTA was a private competitor with its own network, and only after that part of the Air France group.
• Confusing UTA with UAT – UAT was one of the two predecessors; the letters are just swapped.
• Taking Air Afrique for a UTA subsidiary – the two worked closely together on Africa routes, but Air Afrique was a separate multinational airline of African states.
• Confusing Flight 772 with Lockerbie – both attacks are attributed to Libya, but Pan Am 103 hit a Boeing 747 over Scotland in December 1988. More about the US airline on the page about Pan Am.
• Taking every 747 with “B3” for a UTA livery – many of these jets flew in Air France colors for years after 1992.

Conclusion

For almost three decades, UTA was France’s second big voice on long-haul: privately financed, strong in Africa and the Pacific, technically flying DC-8s, DC-10s and, early on, the 747-300. The bombing of Flight 772 in September 1989 remains the darkest chapter – a few months later Air France took control, and by the end of 1992 UTA was history. If you sort old slides today or come across the code B3 in registration histories, you will still run into it again and again.