Originally Posted by
Arthur Bellcrank
The maintenance facility at Blackpool closed down towards the end of 1980, Some of the high hours Heralds were withdrawn from service and the remainder were incorporated into the Air UK fleet, engineering was relocated to the former Air Anglia maintenance Base at Norwich. Most of the engineering staff were made redundant at Blackpool, about twenty five engineering staff relocated down to Norwich.
Some of the scenes in Airline were shot in the hangar at Blackpool, following the demise of BIA.
Some of the staff that were made redundant had worked there for many years, in one case an engine fitter had started there with Lancashire Aircraft Corporation as an air engineer on HP Haltons in about 1948 or so, at that time maintenance was carried out on Percival Proctors, Avro Yorks, DH86B, C-47, Airspeed Consuls, Bristol 170 and DH 89A.
The last Herald that had a major service was G-AVPN, this was completed just before closure of the base, the aircraft operated with Air UK, went on to carry out passenger work with Euroair and was converted by JEA to operate as a freighter with Channel Express, eventually in 1997 making its last flight to Elvington to be displayed in the museum.
A further snippet of information on the theme of tv series, some of the scenes of the series "Family at War" were shot in what was the old BIA NDT section due to the 1940 air of authenticity.
Did Blackpool service BIA’s BAC 1-11’s too?