of the UK carrier's first three One-Eleven 300s between the end of May and July. British Eagle marketed its 79-seat, all-tourist Heathrow—Glasgow One-Eleven jet services as a better and faster alternative to BEA's Comet 4B services and as a less time-consuming option compared with BUA's Gatwick—Glasgow InterJet One-Eleven service. New business opportunities In addition to operating the new One-Elevens on its own scheduled and non-scheduled services, British Eagle also offered its new short-haul jets to other airlines on a contract basis. These were mainly wet leases. KLM, Scandinavian Airlines and Swissair were among the airline's most prominent wet lease customers. By 1966, annual passenger numbers had increased to 944,488 (up from 153,000 in 1963) while profits had reached £585,000. Completion of company reorganisation The end of 1966 also saw the completion of the Eagle group of companies' reorganisation. This had resulted in setting up Eagle International Airlines as a new group holding company. Apart from British Eagle International Airlines, other subsidiaries included British Eagle (Liverpool)—the former Starways, Eagle Aircraft Services, Knightsbridge Air Terminal and Sky Chefs, the group's own catering company. This period furthermore saw Bamberg regaining 100% control of the Eagle group, as a result of his exercising an option to buy back Cunard's remaining 40% interest in British Eagle. Deteriorating business environment 1967 was a bad year for the British travel industry. The brief Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbours caused a temporary spike in oil prices while both the military coup in Greece and new Spanish access restrictions to Gibraltar resulted in fewer people visiting these places. In addition, the value of sterling dropped by 14.7%, as a result of many Arab countries switching their sterling balances in London to dollars and moving them to Zürich. These events were responsible for a sharp reduction in the IT business's annual rate of expansion—down to 12% to just over a million passengers after three years of spectacular growth. This in turn led to the implementation of a major cost-reduction programme at British Eagle following an estimated drop of 20% in projected summer holiday traffic, as a result of the challenging economic conditions. As a consequence, flightdeck personnel numbers were reduced by 48 (out of a total of 246). Applications for transatlantic scheduled rights In 1967, British Eagle—as well as BUA, Caledonian and Transglobe—also applied to the ATLB for licences to operate scheduled and non-scheduled services in competition