Originally Posted by
chevvron
Or as I said, when the hard runway is ready, first flight from Yeovil to land at Yeovilton like they did with the VC10s Brooklands to Wisley and Brough to Warton for the last Hawks..
In a fast jet trainer there's only a very small amount of mass which can be left uninstalled at the first flight stage (a handful of avionics boxes at the very most), so the VC10 logic doesn't cross over. And BAES briefly resumed Hawk flights out of Brough only so that Warton final assembly capacity could be redeployed for Typhoon, with surface finishing and flight testing for both types being consolidated there. This made best use of the company's existing workforces at both sites.
Extending the runway at Yeovil could avoid the need to establish a final assembly facility at Yeovilton. But attaching wings to fuselage post-road move is a simple task that would only need a small facility, much cheaper to build and maintain than a jet-capable runway at Yeovil. And with the sites so close together, it would effectively be one workforce working across them. So, to me it would not make commercial sense to extend Yeovil's runway purely to allow a short hop to Yeovilton.