built by GM in North America. Timescale for delivery and introduction was very tight. If they all came by sea, there would not have been time to train all the drivers and maintenance engineers in advance of scheduled introduction. Flying the first one over gave a couple of extra weeks for the training programme so that the rest could be used almost from the dockside
an ex colleague of mine claimed to have been the loading master on that flight - never sure if he was telling the truth or not
