to share its revenues with BOAC. In November 1958, Eagle applied to the Air Transport Advisory Council (ATAC), the contemporary UK Government department in charge of air transport economic regulation, for permission to offer low fares on existing and planned scheduled routes to Cyprus, Gibraltar, Malta, Singapore, the Bahamas, the Caribbean as well as East and West Africa. For instance, Eagle's £19 proposed fare to Malta compared with BEA's £52.60 and its £199 Singapore fare compared with a £351 fare charged by BOAC. This marked the first occasion on which a private British airline sought approval to offer scheduled fares that undercut the equivalent published fares of the state-owned airlines by a substantial margin. Eagle's low fares were designed to increase the British market share on routes the state airlines had monopolised by stimulating demand. The airline argued that the British economy as a whole would benefit if it was granted permission to offer these fares, as a consequence of additional foreign exchange earnings accruing to the UK Exchequer that resulted from boosting Britain's share of total traffic. Loss-making BEA and BOAC lodged objections with ATAC against Eagle's low-fare proposals, which were upheld. By the spring of 1959, Eagle Airways (Bermuda) was operating scheduled passenger flights with Vickers Viscount 805 turboprop aircraft between Bermuda and Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and New York City in the U.S. as well as between Bermuda and Montreal in Canada. Breaking even on scheduled operations Following six years of losses, Eagle managed to break even on what it claimed to be Britain's biggest network of independent-operated scheduled services comprising 12 routes to Europe by 1959. By the late 1950s, all aircraft carried the Eagle Airways name. The early 1960s (1960–1963) Following Blackbushe's closure to commercial air traffic in 1960, Eagle moved its base to London Heathrow, then simply known as London Airport. Eagle along with British United Airways (BUA) — its principal contemporary independent competitor – had successfully lobbied the Government to bring about a change in legislation that had given their state-owned counterparts a virtual monopoly on scheduled services. This resulted in the Civil Aviation (Licensing) Act of 1960, which abolished BEA's and BOAC's statutory monopoly on principal domestic and international scheduled routes and – theoretically – gave the independents equal opportunities to develop such routes in their own right. Eagle concurred with BUA and Caledonian Airways — an independent upstart that would subsequently compete