Times Obituary: Sir Freddie Laker

The inspiration for Skytrain came in 1971 when the Government cracked down on affinity groups that had until then been a way of providing reduced fares for groups of like-minded people. This was a system that had inevitably become abused. (Laker himself was always careful to have a lawyer at Gatwick to get such groups of passengers to sign affidavits that they were, indeed, members of a dahlia fanciers’ association or whatever the label might be.)

What was needed, he realised, was an operation like a railway where passengers simply turned up, bought their tickets and boarded. When the flight was full, they waited for the next. Passengers bought their own food, and low fares came through cutting out the frills, while Laker maintained the safety standards demanded by the regulators. Laker also pioneered reduced thrust takeoffs, which meant longer flying hours per aircraft and fewer overhauls.

From 1977 until 1982 Skytrain was a revolutionary success. In London people queued for reservations in the streets outside Laker’s offices at Victoria. It became a cult for even the wealthy to fly Skytrain, since it was fun and unfussy. Rich London passengers came on board with hampers from Harrods; those at the New York end, with picnics from Zabar’s.

Having established Skytrain services from three UK airports to New York, San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles and Tampa, Laker envisaged Globetrain which would fly via Los Angeles to Hong Kong and back to Britain. In the late 1970s he applied for licences for around 140 European routes which were intended to open up the European market to lower fares.

But this initiative prompted a number of national carriers — among them British Airways, Pan Am, TWA, and Air India — to hold secret meetings to devise a strategy to close Laker down. Although Laker had always made a profit, he had an overdraft of £9 million with the Clydesdale Bank. The year 1981-82 was one of rising oil prices, recession and a falling pound. Other airlines on the North Atlantic route set out deliberately to undercut Laker’s fares. Pan Am’s decision to cut its economy fares by 66 per cent was a particularly heavy blow.

In February 1982 Laker was forced into receivership, but his loyal public lined up behind their hero and started a £5-a-head “Save Fredair” fund, which raised £3.5 million. The receiver sued the defendant airlines in an anti-trust action and recovered £80 million to distribute to the small creditors. Laker sued personally and recovered £8 million.

But it was too late to prevent his collapse and the end of his ambitions. Thereafter this champion of private enterprise always referred to civil servants as “bums and gangsters” and maintained that private aviation did better under Labour governments than Tory ones. Certainly, it was the James Callaghan administration under which he had been knighted in 1978.

Frederick Alfred Laker was born in 1922 and grew up in Canterbury in a two-up, two-down house with no bathroom and an outside lavatory. His father left home when Laker was five. He adored his mother Hannah, who made a living buying and selling things, clearing houses, ran a general store and taught her son his entreprenurial skills. Laker named one of his DC10s “Canterbury Belle” after her, and rearranged flight schedules so that whenever she flew, she travelled in that aircraft.

Laker was not a promising pupil at Simon Langton School, Canterbury — but he ran the school tuck shop in return for free tuck. At 16 he joined Short Brothers at Rochester as an apprentice. This at first meant mainly sweeping up and fetching tea. In the latter chore he demonstrated embryonic entrepreneurial skills in negotiating a bulk price for the tea from the canteen which he then sold on to the workers.

During the Second World War he served as an engineer in the Air Transport Auxiliary, whose task was to deliver aircraft from factories to squadrons. He also learnt to fly with the ATA but, more importantly, he learnt the rudiments of running an airline.

After the war he qualified for a civil flying licence and then went to work for British European Airways. But he hated the state operation and soon left. He went freelance as a pilot, at the same time setting up a number of small businesses, not all of which were connected with aviation. He bought and sold government spare parts and war surplus vehicles, gambled on buying the crop of a cherry orchard while it was still in blossom, and sold plants door to door from the back of a van.

A break came in 1948 when he bought 12 Halifax bombers which had been converted for cargo. This enabled him to play a leading part in the Berlin airlift, and by the time the year-long Russian land and water blockade of the city was over, his aircraft had flown 2,577 round trips carrying 11.6 per of the total tonnage of supplies moved by civil airlines.

After the airlift, Aviation Traders, bought and sold for scrap surplus wartime combat aircraft, making him the only man to “turn Spitfires back into saucepans”. During the 1950s Laker started a small charter airline and even designed and built his own small airliner, the Aviation Traders Accountant. It had no future, however, since no one would build it under licence. Nevertheless his reputation — and his wealth — grew. By the end of the decade he had become a millionaire and was able to indulge a passion for owning racehorses.

In 1960, with many British private airlines fighting for survival and eventually merging as British United Airways, he was asked to be its managing director. He then placed orders for the first BAC 1-ll and VC10 jetliners, and negotiated South American routes abandoned by BOAC as unprofitable. He created the Carvair from the DC4 by putting a door in the nose of the aircraft and placing the cockpit on top so that cars could be flown across the Channel.

But in 1965, tired of internal squabbles and wrangling with trade unions — “we spent hours arguing over whether the tea in the canteen was hot enough” — he resigned. Laker Airways was formed in 1966 as a “contract carrier to the package holiday trade”. His offices were in the hangar and he and top management were closely involved with maintenance and crew. Bare light bulbs hung in his office, initially furnished with orange box seating. At Gatwick he ran a small, personalised outfit. The aircraft were painted in his racing colours, red and black, with his name boldly on the fuselage.

Laker never lost an opportunity for publicity. At press conferences and inaugurals his 6ft rounded frame would be seen, arms outstretched and flapping like wings. The first Skytrain flight took off from Gatwick on September 26, 1977. From 1976 to 1982 he also operated International Caribbean Airways for the Barbados government, flying via Luxembourg.

After his company went into receivership, Laker joined the American speaking circuit, tried unsuccessfully to restart a holiday company and, at the invitation of his friend Sir Jack Hayward, moved in 1983 across the Atlantic. In 1992 he set up Laker Airways (Bahamas) with two 727s, flying gamblers from the US to casinos on Grand Bahama island where Hayward and another friend, Tiny Rowlands, had interests. He sold his Tudor mansion, Furzegrove near Lewes, and his Woodstock stud farm at Epsom, though he retained his stewardship of the Jockey Club.

He kept an apartment in Florida and built himself a house in the Bahamas where he kept his yacht. He adored gadgetry, computers and satellite navigation systems, and his light reading was technical boat manuals.

In his personal life, Laker suffered several tragedies. After the death of his eldest son, Kevin, a second son, Freddie Robert died four hours after birth of respiratory problems. His third son, Freddie Allen, was shot in the stomach in Miami at the age of 12, but survived. In 1993 Laker developed prostate cancer, and in the US he campaigned for greater awareness of the condition.

He was married four times, and is survived by a daughter Elaine and son.

Sir Freddie Laker, founder of Laker Airways and Skytrain, was born on August 6, 1922. He died on February 9, 2006, aged 83.