Why does this aircraft attract such a following? I've never flown in one (still got a chance to rectify that situation!) but I have a fondness for it that I can't justify.
I first encountered it when I was a humble plane guard in the 1970's. BA used to run their afternoon LHR- BFS service with one and in the winter the APU exhaust was angled down just nicely to keep me warm as toast. It was probably a terrible place to stand from a Health & Safety point of view. Later having moved up the ladder a bit I marvelled at their versatility landing on a runway we'd only been partly successful in clearing of ice.
ATC 'Speedbirdxxx how did you find the braking action?'
Speedbirdxxx, vacating at block 17 from 10L 'Don't know, you said it was slippery, so we didn't use the brakes, just the reverse thrust!!'
Nowadays, the only ones we see at LGW are the Portugese machines, digging BA out of the fertiliser. Rather tired-looking examples but still plodding away.
And don't forget what the Ghost of flight 401 has to say...
Repo appeared to a captain to tell him, "There will never be another crash. We will not let it happen".
Cheers,
The Odd One