Originally Posted by
Wander00
How easy (or difficult) was it to get the Belfasts certificated as civil aircraft?
Following is from my notes over the years, based on secondary sources so may be dodgy in places.
Total cost of civil certification in 1978 - 80 was around £10 million. Shorts had done a lot of the basic work in the mid-1960s when they planned to build two civilian white-tails at the end of the RAF production. That idea was abandoned when the RAF cut the order from 30 to 10 and thus the CofA work was curtailed. But they kept the paperwork and the RAF also released a lot of service data as part of the fleet sale.
The main certification problem was the Belfast's stall which was reported to be unusual, no pitching or rolling but a fast sink. The RAF were content with stick-shakers but the CAA required stick-pushers too. Smiths removed two of the channels of the triplex autopilot ( disabling Autoland ) and repurposed them for the pushers. I think the work was done at Manston on the first three aircraft which Heavylift later inherited. I don't know where subsequent aircraft were modified, possibly at Southend where BAF did Heavylift's maintenance.
Other civilian mods were the radios and a second weather-radar display, for the left-hand seat. One of the later Heavylift aircraft was also cleared with a long upper deck for passengers instead of just the short gallery.
Heavylift initially had one aircraft based in Singapore under the CAA cert and had planned for at least one more in USA and / or Mexico, but as far as I know never went through the FAA certification process and abandoned that idea.