Originally Posted by
gunning
Maybe off-thread, but I remember as a small boy in the early 1960s seeing Avro Yorks at Heathrow, in the glorious days when you could see the aeroplanes parked near the southern side of the airport where the cargo centre is now. I believe these were Skyways airline passenger aircraft, or maybe used for cargo. They were painted in a pale green/grey, maroon and silver scheme as I recall. I also remember the Air Canada DC-8 (or maybe Convair Coronado) which over- or undershot and ended up in a cabbage field south of the airport. There was also a regular flight by a Breguet Deux Ponts out of Heathrow , probably still into the early 1970s - that was a sight to behold; was it passenger or cargo?
The Skyways Yorks had long been given up for passenger service, but did run on into the early 1960s at Heathrow for cargo. Principal charterer was BOAC, who used them to haul replacement engines to AOG Britannias (in particular), and even early jets, stuck downroute with an engine failure. It was not unusual for more than one such mission to be in progress simultaneously.
The Breguet Deux Ponts (alias the "Duck's Pants"
) was used latterly mainly for cargo, but did have some passenger seats left in on the upper deck. It did a nightly freighter run from and to Paris in the small hours, and various daytime runs there as well. In about 1968 it was still running a passenger/cargo service on odd evenings from Bristol Lulsgate to Paris - as you drove out on the A38 road from Bristol it would be prominent on the skyline when on the ramp. It was a big aircraft for 4 x R-2800 engines and the 1 a.m. MTOW departure at full bore and gradual climb was well known for waking up the residents around Heathrow.