A Little VC10derness

An know the pre RAF history of the AC? I am assumeing they were not new when the RAF got them

I believe that 4 aircraft were british airways and 3 were pan am airways but I could stand corrected??

Andy

ACLVC10 wrote:I believe that 4 aircraft were british airways and 3 were pan am airways but I could stand corrected??

Andy

Actually 6 BA and 3 Pan Am. The Pan Am ones being bought in slightly in 2005 and non of the Pan Am ones converted for inflight refuelling, remaining pretty much standard airliners for troop carrying.

Gsxr600 wrote:

ACLVC10 wrote:I believe that 4 aircraft were british airways and 3 were pan am airways but I could stand corrected??

Andy

Actually 6 BA and 3 Pan Am. The Pan Am ones being bought in slightly in 2005 and non of the Pan Am ones converted for inflight refuelling, remaining pretty much standard airliners for troop carrying.

Thanks for the correction

Andy

Stewart wrote:An know the pre RAF history of the AC? I am assumeing they were not new when the RAF got them

They were second hand, but the BA ones were almost new - BA had only had them in service a little more than a year if I remember rightly. The Pan Am ones had more hours and have been worked pretty hard by the RAF as troop transports. The fleet leader with between 55K and 60K hours is one of the Pan Am machines, the ex BA aircraft have relatively low hours for a T* at about 45K each.

Come to think of it, I think by now all 3 Pan Am aircraft have been scrapped or partially disassembled. One of the Pan Am's was at Cambridge as it needed a major which was uneconomical to do and has now been scrapped, another was retired to Kemble and partially dismantled the last I heard. The cancelled cockpit conversion aircraft may have been a Pan Am machine too, I can't recall now. If it was that's now been scrapped too. 6 left at Bruntingthorpe, at least 5 are ex BA and probably all 6. (The ex BA aircraft all have ZDxxx serial nos, the Pan Ams are/were ZExxx)

Thanks for that clarification

Andy

Slight correction to above, cancelled cockpit conversion was to one of the ex BA T*s ZD949. So by my count there must be 1 ex Pan Am T* at Bruntingthorpe with two scrapped at Cambridge (1x BA and 1xPanAm) and one at Kemble (Pan Am).

Don't know how true it is but read this on another forum "Of course it's worth remembering that the RAF had to buy the L1011 to make up the 60million shortfall in Thatcher's privatization of B A".

What I do know to be true is the BA didn't really want their T*s despite only having them a short time, whether they were surplus or preferred Boeings I don't know. The RAF had tested DC10s in 1983 and had a preference for KDC-10 conversions. But political pressure forced the RAF to buy the ex BA T* basically because BA was still state owned at that time. I guess the T*s have been a good work horse for the RAF, but they have had "lots" of maintenance issues and bad press (just Google James Blunt RAF Tristar). I'm a big T* fan and have flown on ZD948 on a refuelling sortie, but I think the RAF would have been better off with DC10s which was their preference. DC10s are simpler aircraft, generally more reliable (much less of an electrical aircraft) and have long outlasted the T* in service. The "cockpit" upgrade is basically an off the shelf fit of the MD11 cockpit so £22 million could have been saved on that fiasco. Who knows, maybe if we'd gone down the DC10 route we would never have needed Voyager?!

Gsxr600 wrote:
What I do know to be true is the BA didn't really want their T*s despite only having them a short time, whether they were surplus or preferred Boeings I don't know.

Don't forget BA was previously BOAC "Boeing Only Aircraft Corporation!" They didn't want the VC10's either!

As said above, I believe the RAF ending up with BA T* was part of the Thatcher governments preparations for the privatization of BA, the feeling at Brize at the time was that they had ended up with something they didn't really want, the DC10 would have made a lot more sense in the long run.

John Davys was telling me that he flew T*s to asscension and did some 'training' for the RAF although he was a BA captain. One of the first Hamsters and BA VC10 fleet manager for a while

Stewart wrote:John Davys was telling me that he flew T*s to asscension and did some 'training' for the RAF although he was a BA captain. One of the first Hamsters and BA VC10 fleet manager for a while

I heard that in the very early days the T* flew with full BA crews.

I heard that from somewhere aswel, can someone confirm or deny this?

Andy

Err that was excatly what John said, he flew the RAF tristars for the RAF but was BA flight crew

Stewart wrote:Err that was excatly what John said, he flew the RAF tristars for the RAF but was BA flight crew

I think the clarification is that was it a full BA Crew?

Andy

ACLVC10 wrote:
I think the clarification is that was it a full BA Crew?

Andy

Yes I think I read the early flights were with BA cabin crew aswell and even in BA colour scheme until they were repainted and converted at Marshalls.