British Caledonian in the 1970s 31 March 1973 - with the BR airline designator it had inherited from BUA at the time of its formation. This resulted in exclusive use of the BR designator as a prefix for all BCal flight numbers. In 1973, BCal also inaugurated its fourth scheduled domestic trunk route between London Gatwick and Manchester. The new service was contracted to British Island Airways (BIA), BUIA's successor, which operated two daily return trips using its Handley Page Dart Herald turboprops. On 20 March 1974, BCal switched its Gatwick—Paris services to the then brand-new Charles de Gaulle Airport in the northern Paris suburb
Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport Airport opened for civil operations in May 1960, when it replaced the old Palas Airport (founded in 1932). A passenger terminal with a capacity of 200 passengers per hour was inaugurated in 1962, followed, five years later, by an expansion to a processing capacity of 300 pax/hour. In 1974, a major expansion increased the processing capacity to 1,000 pax/hour. Use of the airport peaked at 778,766 passengers in 1979, when foreign tourism to the Romanian Riviera was at a high. Mihail Kogălniceanu International Airport handled 127,635 passengers in 2017, which represents a 34.9% increase over the previous year. The airport