On this day in 1961

The Handley Page Dart Herald was a short-range regional airline for developing countries, but the manufacturer’s first customer was closer to home. British European Airways ordered three to use in the Scottish Highlands in 1959 and, two years later, Jersey Airlines became the first customer for the upgraded Series 200, which carried 56 passengers in a pressurised cabin. 

Although it would have to wait for its six planes to be manufactured and delivered, it was already looking forward to the major benefit of upgrading to the new craft: lower running costs. Assuming it sold every seat on each crossing, Jersey Airlines would be able to fly customers from the mainland to Jersey and back for just one penny per passenger per mile.

A stopgap measure

The Times reported, “The Herald, which made the Gatwick to Jersey inaugural flight today in about an hour, is one of two 44-seat Series 1 aircraft which Jersey Airlines have leased from Handley Page to tide them over until the six 50-passenger Series 2 Heralds on order are delivered later in the summer. The forward fuselage of these aircraft has been lengthened by 42 inches to accommodate six more seats.”

Sadly, Handley Page wasn’t around for long after the upgraded Herald took to the skies. In March 1970 it went into voluntary liquidation after it found itself unable to compete for government contracts against Hawker Siddeley and the British Aircraft Corporation after nationalisation of the British airline companies.

 

...and on this day in 1984

Denis James Boreham, then 24, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death on 17 May 1984. This caused an uproar on the mainland, which would have to conduct the execution on Jersey’s behalf if it wasn’t rescinded.

The Guardian quoted Labour MP George Foulkes, who declared, “Jersey is not a paradise island but a parasite island, because it lives off the United Kingdom with low taxation yet we provide services, which in this case could be the gallows.”

In Parliament, on 4 June 1984, Foulkes asked Conservative minister David Mellor what his policy was on mercy for convicts sentenced to death in the Channel Islands. As recorded in Hansard, Mellor answered, “the practice of my right hon. and learned Friend [the Home Secretary] in respect of a sentence of death passed in Jersey or the Isle of Man, like that of his predecessors in recent years, has been to advise Her Majesty the Queen to commute the sentence to one of life imprisonment” and that, therefore, “the sentence of death recently imposed in Jersey on Denis James Boreham has been so commuted.”