 The introduction of ABC flights was an attempt by the airline industry and the aviation authorities in Europe and North America, mainly the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, to replace the complicated and unworkable "affinity group" charter rules with a more rational set of rules that was easier to implement as well as less open to potential abuse.In the late 1960s an obscure rule crafted by IATA concerning the permissibility of chartering aircraft to operate flights across the North Atlantic for the sole purpose of carrying so-called "affinity groups" at fares below IATA's officially agreed minimum fare for any given route by the organisation's member airlines through their wholly owned, non-IATA subsidiaries (such as BEA Airtours or BOAC Charters for instance), came to the attention of a determined group of mainly non-IATA airlines, which sought to exploit these legal loopholes for themselves.This group of airlines included many former leading independent British airlines, such as Britannia Airways, British United Airways, Caledonian Airways, Dan-Air and Laker Airways.