VC10 were not great on range, my very first ever flight LHR-Barbados ( staff travel subload) in Nov 1971 turned into LHR-JFK JFK Barbados because us subloads were bumped due to the SV10 being unable to make the trip due to Winter winds something that was not uncommon apparently . Barbados is almost exactly 4100 miles from LHR so no margin for winds and back then the alternate would have had to be Port of Spain another couple of hundred miles further I think the VC10 struggled to make Bermuda at times since there is no real alternate for Bermuda except JFK which is another 750 odd miles on top of the 3400 LON-BDA trip often requiring a long northward diversion in the winter due to 'winds aloft (a lovely phrase) and the risk that in winter Bermudas common Sw Gales are a challenge with the runway facing NW .. Which leads me to wonder which would be better in a cross wind the 70' or the VC10.
The VC10 especially the Super was a lovely aircraft as pax and I have clear and lovely memories of walking out and up the steps on a hot steamy night on some relatively small ex colonial airfield towards a VC10 bathed in the flood lights tail lit up ready to take me back to the grey skies of LHR . What it wasnt good at was range and once the 'fanjet' 707s and DC8s came along it was seriously lacking in range and thus flexibility on BOAC/BAs very extensive route . Fine for LHR to the Gulf ,Eastern seaboard but that's all it could do reliably. The African trips were mostly mulit stoppers . (I did LHR- Cyprus-Khartoum-Addis Seychelles once) On the other hand it (and perhaps the 707 occasionally) operated the amazing LHR-JFK- LAX-Honolulu-Fiji -NZ-SyD referred to above and the even more exotic Tokyo-HK-Colombo-Seychelles Mauritius (?) - Joburg , which involved some complex schedule juggling to get the actual plane back to LHR.
Convenient as the ultra long range non stops are they do lack a certain mystique compared to the multi stoppers which must have been terrific trips for the crews
PB