Sir Frederick Alfred Laker (August 6, 1922 – February 9, 2006), better known as Sir Freddie Laker, was a British airline entrepreneur. He was one of the first airline owners to introduce the no-frills airline system, a business model that has since proven to be very successful worldwide with companies such as Ryanair, Southwest Airlines and Virgin Blue.
Laker, originally from Canterbury, Kent and an old boy of the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys, started working in aviation with Short Brothers in Rochester. He was a member of the Air Transport Auxiliary during and immediately after World War II (1941-46).
After World War II he went into business as a war-surplus aircraft dealer. The Soviet blockade of West Berlin in 1948, during which all available aircraft were needed to fly essential supplies into West Berlin, allowed his business to flourish. By 1954 he, as Channel Air Bridge, was flying cars and their passengers in Bristol Freighters from Southend to Calais; after various company mergers, he became managing director of British United Airways in 1960.
In 1966 he departed to form his own airline, Laker Airways, using second-hand airliners from BOAC. The livery was a mixture of black and red with a bold LAKER logo on the tailplane. Laker Airways was committed to offering air travel as economically as possible with passengers being required to buy tickets on the day of travel and their meals being paid for separately.
Skytrain
In 1973 the company submitted an application to the British Air Transport Licensing Board to launch its transatlantic service at a price almost one-third that of the major competition, marketing it as Skytrain. The application was not granted until 1977, after much legal wrangling (there were doubts as to Laker's economic viability and allegations of adverse pressure from a cartel involving the major airlines, who had meanwhile lowered their prices to just above Laker's level).
Skytrain was extremely popular, and Laker was popular with the public and regarded as one of Margaret Thatcher's golden boys of industry (along with Sir Clive Sinclair and Sir Alan Sugar). In 1978 Laker was knighted for services to the airline industry. His airline became one of the early buyers of the first Airbus airliner, the Airbus A300, and in 1981 had plans to expand into Europe.
Bankruptcy
In 1982 the company went bust, owing over £250 million. The airline made its last flight on February 6, 1982 when the airline went bankrupt. There were numerous reasons for this — Britain and the world were in recession and other airlines were making a loss by competing with Laker. Laker Airways had expanded too quickly in the late 1970s and bought a large fleet of Douglas DC-10s at just the wrong time — the DC-10 was perceived to have an uncertain safety record, scaring off potential customers (there had been a number of fatal crashes involving the aircraft in the mid-1970s). The fallout from the company's demise descended into litigation and confusion.
Laker was undaunted and almost immediately attempted to re-launch the airline on the back of a strong public following (a relief fund gathered over a million pounds, helped by an endorsement from the music band The Police who had used the airline to tour America). Laker, by now living in the Bahamas, got off the ground again in the early 1990s, moving his refounded business' base to Freeport. Laker Airlines flew from there until it shut down in 2005.
Laker is also remembered for his famous advice to fellow airline entrepreneurs Sir Richard Branson, of Virgin Atlantic, and Stelios Haji-Ioannou, of easyJet, to "sue the bastards" — a reference to the bullying tactics of British Airways in trying to force the no-frills upstarts out of business. Virgin Atlantic later named one of its Boeing 747s The Spirit of Sir Freddie.
Sir Freddie Laker divided his final years living both in his waterfront home in Lucaya, Grand Bahama Island where he kept his yacht, The Lady Jacqueline, and in Florida. Sir Freddie died on February 9, 2006, at age 83 in a suburban Miami hospital in Hollywood, Florida following complications from cardiac surgery to implant a pacemaker. He was survived by his fourth wife, Jacqueline Harvey, a former airline hostess he married in 1985 and also by his two children: a daughter, Elaine, by his first wife Joan (with whom he also had a son who died in 1968 at age 17 after crashing a sports car Freddy had given him for his birthday -- the marriage collapsed that same year;) and a son, Freddie Allen, born to his third wife, Priscilla Gates (with whom he also had another son who died in infancy.)
External links
- www.lakerairways.co.uk - A website dedicated to Laker Airways, a source of information and a contact point for ex-crew members.
- Reuters News announcing his death
- Obituary from BBC News
- [1] from Miami Herald
- [2] from The Telegraph
- [3]Final Interview