Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
The -500 suffered, like most downsized aircraft variants, from relatively poor economics. That may have had something to do with its short career at BA.
It was, like the B747SP, built for long range but soon overtaken by more modern aircraft. The rationale for offloading them was that Lord King's remit was to get BA ready to be privatised and they were desperately short of cash. The B707s and VC10s had followed the Viscount fleet into retirement, 2 new build B747-236Bs were sold before delivery to Malaysian and G-KILO was flogged off to Cathay. A further two B747-136s, G-AWNI/K went to TWA and BA were delighted to offload the TriStar 500s to the RAF. BA were a hugely lossmaking and dysfunctional org back in the day.