support for its Gatwick fleet. During 1970, the airline commenced commercial operations out of Gatwick, initially using a fleet of seven second-hand ex-BEA de Havilland Comet series 4B aircraft which seated 109 passengers in a single-class configuration. On 6 March 1970, the first revenue flight departed Gatwick. Corporate changes and new services During 1971, BEA Airtours had decided to replace the entire fleet with a similar number of larger capacity, longer range and more fuel-efficient ex-American Airlines Boeing 707-123Bs to enable it to commence non-stop, long-haul charter flights, including affinity group charters to North America. Despite having obtained permission from the Department of Trade and Industry to import second-hand 707-120Bs and the non-availability of internally sourced alternatives (BOAC's 707-436s) within the envisaged timeframe, both corporations opposed this decision. They insisted that any new aircraft should be exclusively sourced from the existing BEA and BOAC fleets. Following the corporations' intervention, BEA Airtours acquired seven former BOAC Boeing 707-436s. These aircraft had a greater seating capacity than required and were powered by four Rolls-Royce Conway engines, an older generation engine type than the four Pratt & Whitney JT3D turbofans which powered the ex-American 707-123Bs it had originally selected to replace its Comet fleet. This meant that the ex-BOAC 707s had higher operating costs. However, BOAC was prepared to sell these aircraft to BEA Airtours at a lower price than American was asking for its planes. The £4.3m sale price included BOAC's entire spares holding (inclusive of engines) for the seven aircraft. This helped compensate for the cost differential. The first of these 174-seat aircraft entered service in 1971 while the last aircraft of this batch joined the fleet in 1973. By that time, four of the airline's nine Comet 4Bs had already been withdrawn from service and sold to rival British charter airlines. The 1973 oil crisis in the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, which led to a quadrupling of the price of a barrel of oil, substantially increased the operating costs of the remaining fuel-thirsty Comets and began to have an adverse impact on the airline's financial performance. British Airtours, as the airline had become known following the establishment of British Airways in 1974 as a result of the 1972 BEA—BOAC merger, therefore decided to retire its remaining five Comets at the end of that year's summer season and to sell the entire fleet to independent British operator Dan-Air. In