business (leaving Eagle Aviation in charge of all non-scheduled operations, including trooping flights), inaugurated its first scheduled service on 6 June 1953 from London (Blackbushe) to Belgrade (via Munich), followed by London—Aalborg and London—Gothenburg. It also began operating domestic flights within the UK and additional international services to secondary western European destinations. Eagle's expansion was supported by 22 Vickers Vikings that had been retained from an earlier purchase of 37 former BEA examples. Entry into package holiday market In 1954, the Ministry of Aviation granted Eagle permission to operate a limited programme of a new type of low-fare service that combined air travel and overseas holiday accommodation at a cost substantially below the aggregate of each individual component if purchased separately. This new concept enabled the airline to circumvent regulatory restrictions that prevented private airlines from competing with their state-owned counterparts. It also helped increase fleet utilisation. When the Thomas Cook & Son travel agency declined Eagle's offer to take on the role of the airline's tour operator, Eagle acquired the Sir Henry Lunn Ltd travel agency chain. This made the airline one of the pioneers of the British package holiday industry and probably marked the first occasion in the UK an airline became vertically integrated with its own in-house tour operator (i.e. where an airline owns or is owned by a tour operator or both are part of an integrated travel group) British Eagle also acquired the Polytechnic Touring Association in the 1950s and formed Lunn Poly from the two agencies in the mid-1960s. Eagle's first inclusive tour (IT) flights operated to destinations in Italy and Spain (including Majorca). To make its packages more affordable and increase sales, Lunn began offering hire purchase facilities. Between 1955 and 1960, many of the airline's aircraft carried the Eagle Airways operating name. By 1957, the summer IT programme included for the first time 15-day, all-inclusive packages to Spain's Costa Brava. These combined flights to Perpignan in Southern France with onward coach connections, with prices starting from £32.50 for travel on Mondays (£36 for weekend travel). 1957 was also the year Eagle joined IATA. Branching out On 26 July 1957, Eagle formed an overseas subsidiary, named Eagle Airways (Bermuda), in preparation for the launch of transatlantic scheduled services between Bermuda and New York, using Viscount 800 turboprop aircraft. Within a year of launching its first transatlantic scheduled route, the airline's North Atlantic scheduled