This episode of Grounded looks at UKIA – UK International Airlines, they operated a Boeing 767 from East Midlands Airport in the UK to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan. UKIA were a fairly unique airline in that their head office was located above a small furniture shop and and under the same ownership. The airline did manage to acquire a second aircraft however it would never see service with the airline and over ten years after the airline’s demise it was still sat abandoned…
A few notes for today’s episode;
The script for today’s episode was written in early 2018 with the audio being recorded not long after that, at the time of production G-CEMK was still sat abandoned in Brunei though it’s quite possibly been scrapped since.
There was also a serious lack of information regarding this airline, I had to compile a script based on whatever nuggets of information I could gather along with personal recollections from myself and a friend who was headhunted for a senior position with the company.
UKIA did actually operate a few other sub-charter flights aside from the September 2007 one for Thomas Cook, the operated a couple for LTU of Germany and one for XL Airways UK.
As I mentioned above, this was written and recorded back in 2018 (though wasn’t compiled until 2021). I had placed it in a bit of a “strategic reserve” so that I would be able to keep a steady flow of episodes coming out and hopefully keeps you all satisfied until the next episode arrives 🙂 (the original production number for this was GND-01-08, it’s dropping as episode 35).
Thanks for watching and I really appreciate any feedback or suggestions for future episodes.
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#UKIA #UKInternationalAirlines #UKInternational
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Do a story on Golden Gate Airlines.
Unbelievable how did the CAA ever allow them to operate a single flight.
Hi Phil, another fantastic video,
Will we get more UK failures from the 90s/00s? There are so many unfortunately
Great job! I froze when you got to the part that they kept the old United cabins. I rode on one of those 767 at the end of their United career and they were worn out!
Could they not make a lot of aluminium wardrobes
That website looks like something I would have designed in my IT lessons in school
Are you still working on donbassaero
Nice
Another excellent 'Grounded' episode. 👍
I remember this airline the livery was very odd it a AB design on tail with purple