Union des Transports Aériens

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For the Guinean airline, see Union des Transports Aériens de Guinée.

Union des Transports Aériens (UTA) was the largest wholly privately owned, Independent airline in France. It was also the second-largest international, as well as the second principal intercontinental, French airline (after Air France) and a full member of IATA since its inception.

UTA was formed in 1963 as a result of a merger between Union Aéromaritime de Transport (UAT) and Compagnie de Transports Aériens Intercontinentaux (TAI). The airline was a subsidiary of the French shipping line Chargeurs Réunis.

UTA's corporate headquarters was located in central Paris. The company's main operational and engineering base was originally located at Paris Le Bourget Airport. In 1974 the firm moved its main operational base to the then new Charles de Gaulle Airport near the northern Paris suburb of Roissy-en-France.

In 1966 UTA established a subsidiary company named Compagnie Aéromaritime d'Affrètement to give it a foothold in the rapidly growing passenger and cargo charter markets. UTA's charter subsidiary traded as Aéromaritime.[1][2]

UTA also had two sister companies. These were UT Hotels (UTH) and UTA Industries, respectively. The former owned and operated a number of hotels at the destinations served by UTA's worldwide scheduled network. The latter was the airline's maintenance arm. UTA Industries was located at its sister airline's original Paris Le Bourget base, where it remained when the airline shifted its operational base to Charles de Gaulle Airport.

UTA was a shareholder in Air Afrique, the former multinational airline for francophone West Africa, as well (along with Air France and Société pour le Développement du Transport Aérien en Afrique [SODETRAF]). UTA furthermore held a significant monority stake in Air Inter, the leading French domestic airline as well as the largest scheduled domestic carrier in Europe at the time. UTA moreover provided technical assistance to Air Ceylon, Sri Lanka's erstwhile national carrier when that country was still known as Ceylon.

UTA was absorbed into Air France between 1990 and 1992.

Contents

[edit] History

UTA had the largest African network of any European airline, flying to over 25 countries in the region. Its busiest scheduled air route was Paris-Abidjan, served on a daily basis in both directions. UTA primarily operated long-haul, intercontinental scheduled services linking metropolitan France with most countries in francophone West and Central Africa, a number of countries in anglophone West and Southern Africa (including Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi and Zimbabwe), as well as Angola and Mozambique in lusophone Southern Africa, South Africa, Libya in North Africa, Malta, the Middle East (Bahrain and Oman), South Asia (Sri Lanka), Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore), New Caledonia, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and Los Angeles (via the Asia-Pacific route only). In addition, the airline used to have regional traffic rights between Japan, New Caledonia and New Zealand, between South Africa and the French Réunion island in the Indian Ocean, as well as between Tahiti and the US West Coast.[3]

Throughout most of its existence UTA was one of only three wholly privately owned, Independent airlines outside of the US with a major, long-haul scheduled presence (British United Airways (BUA)/British Caledonian (BCal) and Canadian Pacific Airlines (CP Air)/Canadian Airlines International were the other two contemporary non-US Independent, long-haul scheduled carriers). Unlike its British and Canadian Independent contemporaries, for [almost] its entire existence UTA neither operated a dedicated network of short-/medium-haul scheduled routes nor did it compete on any of its scheduled routes with Air France, the primary French flag carrier at the time. This made it an almost exclusively long-haul, intercontinental scheduled airline. It also made its scheduled route network complementary to Air France and Air Inter. (UTA and Air France used to co-ordinate their schedules at Los Angeles to enable passengers to connect between Air France's transatlantic and UTA's transpacific services.)

In 1986 the French government unexpectedly decided to relax its policy of neatly dividing traffic rights for scheduled air services between Air France, Air Inter and UTA, without any route overlaps between them. The regulatory framework governing France's air transport sector at the time had been put in place in 1963. It had prevented the country's three main scheduled airlines from operating outside their respective spheres of influence. It had also prevented these airlines from competing with each other. The French government's decision to adopt a less rigid interpretation of its official aviation policy gradually reversed both of these rules. It therefore enabled UTA to launch scheduled services to new destinations within Air France's sphere of influence, in direct competition with that airline, for the first time in its history. Paris-San Francisco became the first route UTA served in competition with Air France non-stop from Paris. (Air France responded by extending some of its non-stop Paris-Los Angeles services to Papeete, Tahiti, which competed with UTA on the Los Angeles-Papeete sector.) UTA's ability to secure traffic rights outside its traditional sphere of influence in competition with Air France was the result of a successful campaign it had mounted to lobby its government to enable it to grow faster, thereby becoming a more dynamic and more profitable business. During that time UTA also planned to launch a short-haul European feeder network, which was to be operated by its Aéromaritime subsidiary. In the event, these plans were scuppered by a long-running, bitter industrial dispute between UTA's management and the unions representing the majority of pilots at Aéromaritime as well as at UTA itself. The dispute was about the introduction of new, lower pay scales at Aéromaritime to prepare it for the competition it was likely to face at the hands of Europe's new breed of much lower cost, aggressively expanding Independent airlines, as exemplified by UK-based Air Europe at that time. It lasted for the better part of a year from the end of 1988 until October 1989 and resulted in the grounding of both Aéromaritime and UTA during that period. UTA's plans for a European feeder network were also overtaken by its subsequent merger with Air France.[4]

On January 12, 1990 UTA, along with Air Inter and Air France itself, became part of an enlarged Air France group, which in turn became a wholly owned subsidiary of Groupe Air France. On December 18, 1992 UTA ceased to exist as a separate legal entity within Groupe Air France.[5]

Air France's acquisition of both UTA and Air Inter was part of an early 1990s French government plan to create a unified, national carrier with the economies of scale and global reach to counter potential threats resulting from the liberalisation of the EU's internal air transport market.[6]

[edit] Aircraft operated

UTA operated the following aircraft types and sub-types throughout its 29-year existence:

Throughout most of this time UTA's fleet strength stood at about ten to twelve aircraft only. The airline's small fleet size was conditioned by the nature of its operations, i.e. as a long-haul carrier serving most of its routes as multi-stop sectors at low frequencies of less than one flight per day.

In order to facilitate the smooth introduction of the DC-10 into its fleet, UTA became one of the co-founders of the KSSU aircraft maintenance consortium, whose members included KLM, Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) as well as Swissair, in addition to UTA itself. (Each letter in the KSSU consortium's name represented the first letter of each of its members' names, in alphabetical order.)

UTA took delivery of the first Boeing 747-300 to roll off Boeing's production line. The airline also had two Boeing 747-200s converted to 747-200 SUDs (SUD stood for stretched upper deck), thereby joining a select group of only three airlines that chose to have some of their 747-200s re-manufactured in this manner. (KLM and Japan Air Lines [JAL] were the other two airlines in this group. [They had ten and two of their 747-200s converted to -200 SUDs, respectively.])

UTA placed its first-ever order for Airbus aircraft in 1987. The order was for six four-engined A340-300 long-haul widebodied jets. It included an option on a further six aircraft. The aircraft on firm order were to be delivered between 1992 and 1994, at a rate of two planes per year.[7] It was intended that the newly ordered A340s would replace the airline's aging DC-10s as well as facilitate its future expansion into new long-haul markets from the early 1990s onwards.

In 1989 UTA also ordered Boeing's twin-engined 767 widebody on behalf of Aéromaritime. That order had a value of US$250m. It was for three -300ER aircraft.[8] Air France's acquisition of UTA in 1990 resulted in it inheriting two of Aéromaritime's three 767-300ERs (in addition to three of that carrier's subsequently acquired 767-200s), thereby itself becoming a 767 operator by default.

[edit] Incidents and accidents

There were five recorded incidents/accidents involving UTA aircraft. Four of these involved the loss of aircraft and three the loss of lives.[1]

On October 2, 1964 a UTA Douglas DC-6B inherited from predecessor UAT (registration F-BHMS)[2] crashed into Mt. Alcazaba near Granada, Andalusia, in Southern Spain. The doomed aircraft was operating the airline's scheduled sector from Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, Spain, to Port Étienne (as Nouadhibou was known then), Mauritania. There were no survivors among the aircraft's 80 occupants (seven crew and 73 passengers).[9]

On July 12, 1972 a scheduled UTA flight en route from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, to Paris was taken over by hijackers. There were two fatalities as a result of this incident.[10]

On March 10, 1984 a UTA DC-8-63PF (registration F-BOLL)[3] flying from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo to Paris CDG with an intermediate stop at N'Djamena in Chad was destroyed, following two consecutive bomb explosions on board the aircraft while it was on the ground at N'Djamena Airport. There were no fatalities since all passengers and crew managed to evacuate the aircraft before the second explosion in the central baggage compartment tore the aircraft apart.[11]

On March 16, 1985 a UTA Boeing 747-3B3 (registration F-GDUA)[4] was destroyed on the ground at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport when a fire was accidentally started while cleaning of the aircraft's cabin was in progress. (According to contemporary press reports, the fire was allegedly started by a cleaner who carelessly dropped a burning cigarette in one of the toilets.) The fire rapidly spread, engulfing the entire cabin in flames. This resulted in the aircraft's total destruction, which was subsequently written off. There were no injuries as a result of this incident.[12]

On September 19, 1989 UTA flight 772, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 (registration N54629)[5] operating the Brazzaville-N'Djamena-Paris CDG sector, was bombed 46 minutes after take-off from N'Djamena causing the aircraft to crash while flying over Niger. All 156 passengers and 15 crew members on board perished.[13][14] This accident marked the airline's deadliest fatal accident as well as the deadliest air disaster involving a French-operated airliner, in terms of loss of life.

[edit] Code data

  • Former IATA code: UT
  • Former ICAO code: UTA
  • Former callsign: UTA.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ UTA - In Memoriam
  2. ^ Aéromaritime (Compagnie Aéromaritime d'Affrètement) - In Memoriam
  3. ^ M.R. Golder, The Changing Nature of French Dirigisme - A Case Study of Air France. Thesis submitted at Trinity College, Oxford, 1997, p.28
  4. ^ Answers.com (Business and Finance) - Chargeurs International
  5. ^ Air France (Airline, France)
  6. ^ FT.com/Business Life, The Monday Interview, 30 September 2007 - Pilot who found the right trajectory
  7. ^ The New York Times, 18 June 1987, COMPANY NEWS - Order for Airbus
  8. ^ The New York Times, 19 January 1989, BRIEFS
  9. ^ Douglas DC-6B F-BHMS
  10. ^ 1972 hijack of Abidjan-Paris flight resulting in two deaths
  11. ^ McDonnell Douglas DC-8-63PF F-BOLL
  12. ^ Boeing 747-3B3 F-GDUA
  13. ^ UTA 772: The forgotten flight
  14. ^ McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 N54629

[edit] External links

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