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BCal Flight Deck & Cabin Crew Reunion
Friday 26th September 2025
The BCal Flight Deck and Cabin Crew Annual Reunion is to be held, as usual, on the last Friday in September. That is, Friday 26th September 2025.
It will be an afternoon event this year, from midday to 6pm.
The venue will be the usual one of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Crawley.
Tickets will go on sale in June. The price this year is £33 and includes a hot buffet, dessert, tea and coffee. As usual, there will be enough tables and chairs to accommodate everyone who has booked tickets. Tickets are advanced purchase. No tickets will be available on the door. The hotel obviously needs to know how many people are coming sufficiently in advance to arrange the catering and staff numbers.
If the function room hasn’t been booked that evening, the hotel tells us that we can carry on in the room after 6pm. If it has been booked, then those of us who want to carry on into the evening can adjourn to the hotel’s main bar, where more food will be available.
In 2023, in response to feedback from people on our emailing list, we tried altering the timing of the event to the afternoon, instead of the traditional evening event that the reunion had always been for the previous 40+ years. However, the 2023 reunion was not as well supported as previous years’ reunions, with only two thirds of the usual number attending. So, we changed the reunion back to an evening event in 2024. Sadly, even fewer people attended. Around half the number we had each year from 2016 to 2022. So, this year, the reunion committee have decided to try holding an afternoon event again.
The committee are concerned that it is difficult for us to advertise the annual reunion to all those former BCal Flight Deck and Cabin Crew who are not on our emailing list. We would like to acknowledge the help given to us in publicising the reunion by Dave Thaxter, who runs the excellent www.british-caledonian.com website as well as a Facebook group called ‘The British Caledonian Group’. Dave kindly includes a reference to our reunion in his twice-monthly ‘Staff Newsletter’ email that can be subscribed to by contacting him by email on [email protected].
We periodically post details of the reunion on the other three BCal Facebook groups, which are: ‘BCal Family’, ‘British Caledonian Airways’, and ‘BCalReunited.BCal/BUA’. However, because these posts are usually only visible for a short period of time, it is better to periodically check our website and, best of all, to ask us to add your email address to our emailing list.
Please pass on details of our www.bcalreunion.org website to any of your former BCal crew colleagues who you are still in contact with and who you think may be interested in attending the annual reunion.
Many of those people who are on our emailing list must have changed their email address because there have been many ‘undelivered’ messages returned to us. The three-year gap after the 2019 reunion caused by the pandemic didn’t help. To check whether you are on our emailing list, look for an email that was sent out on 13 January 2025 from [email protected] with the subject of: ‘BCAL REUNION 2025 – A DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES’. If you haven’t received this email, then (after checking your junk folder) send an email to us at [email protected] and ask to be added to the emailing list. You will then be sent details of the 2025 and future reunions.
We look forward to seeing you on the afternoon of Friday 26 September 2025.
The reunion committee:
Jeanette Smith/Clark, Phil Benson and Karen Banfield/Strawson
It will be an afternoon event this year, from midday to 6pm.
The venue will be the usual one of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Crawley.
Tickets will go on sale in June. The price this year is £33 and includes a hot buffet, dessert, tea and coffee. As usual, there will be enough tables and chairs to accommodate everyone who has booked tickets. Tickets are advanced purchase. No tickets will be available on the door. The hotel obviously needs to know how many people are coming sufficiently in advance to arrange the catering and staff numbers.
If the function room hasn’t been booked that evening, the hotel tells us that we can carry on in the room after 6pm. If it has been booked, then those of us who want to carry on into the evening can adjourn to the hotel’s main bar, where more food will be available.
In 2023, in response to feedback from people on our emailing list, we tried altering the timing of the event to the afternoon, instead of the traditional evening event that the reunion had always been for the previous 40+ years. However, the 2023 reunion was not as well supported as previous years’ reunions, with only two thirds of the usual number attending. So, we changed the reunion back to an evening event in 2024. Sadly, even fewer people attended. Around half the number we had each year from 2016 to 2022. So, this year, the reunion committee have decided to try holding an afternoon event again.
The committee are concerned that it is difficult for us to advertise the annual reunion to all those former BCal Flight Deck and Cabin Crew who are not on our emailing list. We would like to acknowledge the help given to us in publicising the reunion by Dave Thaxter, who runs the excellent www.british-caledonian.com website as well as a Facebook group called ‘The British Caledonian Group’. Dave kindly includes a reference to our reunion in his twice-monthly ‘Staff Newsletter’ email that can be subscribed to by contacting him by email on [email protected].
We periodically post details of the reunion on the other three BCal Facebook groups, which are: ‘BCal Family’, ‘British Caledonian Airways’, and ‘BCalReunited.BCal/BUA’. However, because these posts are usually only visible for a short period of time, it is better to periodically check our website and, best of all, to ask us to add your email address to our emailing list.
Please pass on details of our www.bcalreunion.org website to any of your former BCal crew colleagues who you are still in contact with and who you think may be interested in attending the annual reunion.
Many of those people who are on our emailing list must have changed their email address because there have been many ‘undelivered’ messages returned to us. The three-year gap after the 2019 reunion caused by the pandemic didn’t help. To check whether you are on our emailing list, look for an email that was sent out on 13 January 2025 from [email protected] with the subject of: ‘BCAL REUNION 2025 – A DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES’. If you haven’t received this email, then (after checking your junk folder) send an email to us at [email protected] and ask to be added to the emailing list. You will then be sent details of the 2025 and future reunions.
We look forward to seeing you on the afternoon of Friday 26 September 2025.
The reunion committee:
Jeanette Smith/Clark, Phil Benson and Karen Banfield/Strawson
