Dan-Air

If you are interested in British aviation history, you cannot get around Dan-Air. The London airline was a fixture of vacation flying for almost four decades – and it had a preference for aircraft that others had already retired. As a result Dan-Air flew a colorful mix of types, including more Comets than any other airline. This page shows you what made Dan-Air what it was, which aircraft you can attribute to it and where you can still find its traces today.

Dan-Air at a glance

Dan-Air was a British charter and scheduled airline, founded on May 21, 1953 as Dan Air Services Limited. Behind it stood not an aviation company but a ship broker: the London firm Davies and Newman. The name comes from their initials – Davies And Newman. The airline had nothing to do with Denmark. That is exactly why “Dan-Air London” was written on the aircraft for years.

The first aircraft was a used Douglas DC-3. In the first years Dan-Air moved several times: from Southend to Blackbushe and in 1960 finally to London Gatwick, which remained its most important base to the end. Later Manchester, Newcastle and – especially interesting for German spotters – Berlin Tegel were added.

The business was initially charter: freight on behalf of other airlines, later mainly package holidays to the south. From 1956 the first scheduled flights were added, and from 1960 Dan-Air built up a year-round scheduled network. The airline reached its peak in 1989 with around 6.2 million passengers. Just three years later it was history.

Codes and callsigns

• IATA code DA: appeared in flight numbers, on tickets and in timetables.
• ICAO code DAN: used by air traffic control to identify flights.
• Callsign DAN-AIR: this is how the crews called in on the radio.

If you evaluate old timetables, tickets or photos with flight numbers, this knowledge helps you with attribution. How IATA and ICAO codes work in general is explained in the article on IATA and ICAO codes. And why some airline callsigns have a history of their own, you can read in Airline callsigns and their history.

The history in stages

Link City: a scheduled network across the country

In 1960 Dan-Air started its first year-round route between Bristol, Cardiff and Liverpool, initially with small de Havilland Doves. This grew into the “Link City” network, which connected the southwest of England with the northeast via the Midlands and the northwest. In the same year Dan-Air flew its first scheduled international service from Bristol and Cardiff, to Basel. In the 1980s routes from Gatwick to Zurich, Lisbon and Madrid were added, and from Manchester to Amsterdam. That meant Dan-Air always had one foot in charter and the other in scheduled business. Where the difference lies is explained in the article Charter flights and scheduled flights.

The fleet: used jets with character

Dan-Air was famous for taking over aircraft cheaply second-hand and flying them for a long time. That produced an unusually colorful mix of types. The most important types at a glance:

Type	Period at Dan-Air	Use	Spotter tip
Douglas DC-3	from 1953	The airline’s first aircraft	Piston-engine classic of the early years
Avro York	approx. 1954–1964	Freighter, also for other airlines	Former military aircraft
Airspeed Ambassador	1960–1971	First type with a pressurized cabin	High-wing with two piston engines
de Havilland Comet 4	1966–1980	Charter, also from Berlin	World’s largest Comet fleet
Boeing 707-321	1971–1978	Transatlantic charter	Only two examples, ex Pan Am
Boeing 727-100/-200	from 1973	Charter, also from Berlin	First British 727 operator
BAC One-Eleven	until 1992	Scheduled and charter	From 1974 also on Dan-Air scheduled routes
Hawker Siddeley HS 748	1970s–1992	Scheduled service, North Sea oil industry	More examples arrived in 1972 with Skyways
BAe 146	from 1983	Scheduled service, including Gatwick–Bern	World’s first scheduled service
Airbus A300	late 1980s	Charter	First widebody, in service for only a few years
Boeing 737-200/-300/-400	1980s–1992	Charter and scheduled	Twelve examples went to British Airways

Comet 4: the trademark

No other airline flew as many de Havilland Comets as Dan-Air. The first two came from BOAC in 1966, after which Dan-Air bought Comets from various previous owners over the years as they switched to more modern jets. In total around 50 examples came together this way by 1976 – not all flew at the same time, and some also served as spare parts donors. The Comets took vacationers from Great Britain and Berlin to the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands. In November 1980 Dan-Air retired the last Comet – ending a defining chapter of the airline. You can read more about the type in the article on the De Havilland Comet as the first jet airliner.

Boeing 727 and 737

On April 13, 1973, the first Boeing 727-100 entered service with Dan-Air, a used aircraft from Japan Air Lines. That made Dan-Air the first British operator of the three-engine jet. Later the longer 727-200 was added as well. The 727s based in Berlin had extra fuel tanks and fewer seats to reach the Canary Islands without a stopover.

In the 1980s Dan-Air brought brand-new Boeing 737s into the fleet for the first time. The variants in service were the 737-200, 737-300 and 737-400. The planned streamlining of the fleet to a few types was never completed before the end. The manufacturer of both types is Boeing.

One-Eleven, HS 748 and BAe 146

In 1974 Dan-Air used jets on its scheduled routes for the first time: on the Gatwick–Newcastle route, Comets flew at first, and from November 1974 the BAC One-Eleven took over. From the end of 1988, Dan-Air offered “Class Elite” on converted One-Eleven 500s, an offering for business travelers. The turboprop Hawker Siddeley HS 748 became the workhorse on the regional routes; with the takeover of the airline Skyways, more examples arrived in 1972. Dan-Air also flew the HS 748 on behalf of the oil industry between the Scottish mainland and the Shetland Islands.

A genuine piece of aviation history is the BAe 146. Dan-Air was launch customer and in May 1983 put the quiet four-engine jet into scheduled service as the first airline in the world – on the Gatwick–Bern route. The manufacturer was British Aerospace, now part of BAE Systems.

Dan-Air at Berlin Tegel

For German aviation fans Dan-Air is above all a Berlin story. Until reunification, only airlines of the Western Allies were allowed to serve West Berlin – that is, American, British and French companies. For travel organizers in the city, British charter airlines were therefore indispensable.

On March 31, 1968, Dan-Air took off from Tegel for the first time, with a Comet to Málaga. From 1969 the airline maintained a base of its own there, where up to five aircraft were stationed for more than two decades. At its peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s, around 170 people worked for Dan-Air in Berlin, and more than 300,000 passengers a year flew with it from Tegel. In Berlin you could see, one after another, the Comet, One-Eleven, 707, 727 and later 737, HS 748 and BAe 146.

Besides vacation flights, Dan-Air also operated scheduled services from Berlin, for example to Amsterdam and Saarbrücken. For passengers from Berlin there was even a German-language inflight magazine called “Kompass”. You can read more about the airport where all this took place in the history of Tegel Airport.

How to recognize Dan-Air

In historic photos Dan-Air is not always recognizable at first glance, because the paint scheme changed several times. In total the aircraft wore four liveries over the decades. Only with the image renewal in the 1980s did the whole fleet get a uniform look; before that, used aircraft partly still flew with traces of their previous owners. Former Skyways HS 748s even briefly wore a mixed livery. Such transitional paint jobs are typical after takeovers – more on this in the article on hybrid and mixed liveries.

Reliable features are:

• “Dan-Air London” titles on the fuselage – the addition “London” only disappeared around a year before the end.
• British registration with G- at the front, on Comets often with registrations from the time at BOAC.
• The aircraft type: a Comet in charter livery from the 1970s was very often a Dan-Air.

If you are interested in the great liveries of aviation history, take a look at the legendary airline liveries.

Accidents

Serious accidents are also part of Dan-Air’s history. On July 3, 1970, a Comet 4 crashed as flight 1903 near Arbúcies in Spain, killing 112 people. On July 31, 1979, an HS 748 crashed on takeoff at Sumburgh in the Shetland Islands and fell into the sea; 17 of the 47 occupants died. The most serious accident occurred on April 25, 1980: flight 1008, a Boeing 727, hit a mountain on approach to Tenerife Los Rodeos Airport (today Tenerife North). All 146 people on board died. It is considered the worst accident involving a British-registered aircraft.

The end in 1992

At the end of the 1980s Dan-Air faced a restructuring. The airline wanted to focus more on scheduled service and reduce the fleet to a few types, and for that it sold aircraft and parts of the company, including the maintenance operation Dan-Air Engineering. From 1990 Dan-Air flew year-round between Gatwick and Tegel, and in 1991 it took over most of the Gatwick routes of the collapsed Air Europe. The turnaround was not enough, though.

In autumn 1992 British Airways bought Dan-Air for the symbolic price of one pound and took on obligations of around £50 million in return. BA kept the short-haul routes from Gatwick and twelve of the most modern Boeing 737s; the remaining aircraft were sold. Only a small part of the workforce moved to British Airways. On November 27, 1992, Dan-Air ended as an independent airline; the company was renamed British Airways (European Operations at Gatwick).

In this Dan-Air shares the fate of other traditional British names that were absorbed into British Airways or disappeared from the market – for example British Caledonian, which was taken over in 1988, or later bmi British Midland. BEA British European Airways is also among BA’s predecessors.

Dan-Air today: traces in museums

You can no longer spot Dan-Air live. A few aircraft from its fleet have survived, though – mainly Comets.

Then there is the former Dan-Air Comet 4B G-APYD of the Science Museum, which sits in storage at Wroughton and is not open to regular visits. If you plan a trip, always check the current opening hours and the placement of the aircraft beforehand – exhibits are occasionally moved, restored or repainted. Tips on recognizing old types are in Spotting vintage aircraft in the sky.

Dan-Air’s airports today

Even though Dan-Air has vanished, its most important airports remain interesting for spotters. London Gatwick was the home base, and the airline also took off regularly from Manchester and Newcastle. Today other charter and leisure airlines fly there – in a way they are the successors to the business that Dan-Air helped build. Berlin Tegel, on the other hand, has been closed since 2020.

Common mix-ups

• Taking Dan-Air for a Danish airline – the name comes from Davies And Newman; the airline was British.
• Taking every Comet in Dan-Air colors for an original – museum aircraft are sometimes repainted; G-APDB, for example, wears BOAC colors again today.
• Confusing Dan-Air with current airlines with a similar name – the historic Dan-Air ended in 1992.
• Taking the BAe 146 for a later type – scheduled service began as early as 1983, with Dan-Air.
• Assigning the IATA code DA to a current airline – in historic records DA stands for Dan-Air.

Conclusion

Dan-Air was not a glamorous state airline but a resourceful charter specialist with a knack for used aircraft. That is exactly what makes it so appealing to aviation fans: the world’s largest Comet fleet, the first British 727 operation, the world’s first BAe 146 scheduled service and a decades-long base at Berlin Tegel are on its record. Today you only meet Dan-Air in museums and in old photos – but there a close look at the titles and registration is well worth it.