Originally Posted by
WHBM
I believe it did. Channel ordered it, one of their five Tridents, frame numbers 2135-9, registration allocations G-AVYA to E. At some stage before delivery they didn't have the funds, and only took two, 'YB and 'YE. Air Ceylon took 'YA, which never wore UK marks and went straight onto the Ceylon register. BKS then took 'YC and 'YD, and as the frames had already been allocated UK marks, that was what they got. When Channel went under their two came to Northeast as well
Getting the one that spent the last year of Channel's existence being stripped for spares at Stansted to keep the other going, when Hawker Siddeley put Channel on 'cash with order', must have been an interesting job. Ostensibly it went to BEA first, for 18 months, but I wonder if it ever actually ran a BEA flight (being a unique 1E model there), that being just the time the BEA engineers took to make it airworthy again.
HS chartered it from Channel for a South American sales tour on 71. It was HS who put it back together. It just needed a paint job from BEA