I worked for BAe at Hatfield making the 146/RJ from 1986 to 1993.
I did a technical apprenticeship there and made the rear passenger door of the queens flight aircraft...
As an apprentice I toured round all the different departments, and even flew a 146 for five whole minutes, while in Flight Test dept. I remember when a poor flight test engineer got sucked into an engine at full wack, not a good day.
I became a development engineer, improving the way we made the nose skins, annealling and stretching them on enormous leaky hydraulic stretch-forming machines from El Segundo.
In flight test once, someone accidentally raised the landing gear in the hangar. The mains didn't budge, but the nose wheel retracted smartly, leaving the weight of the nose resting on the forward passenger door, which in turn was resting on a fairly flimsy stairway.
It became fairly clear that the things just weren't selling, so I took voluntary redundancy when it was offered.
SimonHK