Having been in the biggest hangar in Oxfordshire for some years in the mid 80s, my opinion of the 'funbus' was well past its prime then. The 'C' was under used and under funded, and falling to bits, the spares situation was critical and robbing was daily musical parts. Problems reported were diluted at each upward step of the chain so by the time it got to the people at the top of the tree, the VC10 had no problems!!
BA must have been over joyed when the MoD said that they would BUY all their old VC10s that they had lying about waiting to be scrapped, I would think that the person who offered them that still has a strained wrist from that handshake. Leaving them parked up for a few years was a good idea , gave the airframes time to continue rotting away before they got converted.
The cost of refurbishment and conversion of the 'K's must have been astronomic and only partial, as the amount of corrosion that was found on primary and secondary structures during the first majors was to prove.
The supply system did not help at all. We would order short supply items for green line entries, for them to be provisioned for the next servicing, usually giving them 12 months to source the spares, but after 6 months if spares were not chased they got cancelled, so officially we had no spares problem, but we did have 4 or 5 grounded jets awaiting servicing, to pick a bit from, if they were all not robbed already.
It got to the stage where even a minor could take months instead of weeks and the majors where a joke. Manpower was also an issue, when I arrived I had 15 Cpl's and below when I escaped the madhouse 3 1/2 years later, I had 6, and we were only part of a whole team.
When aircraft finally got released back to the sguadrons they were handed 2 700s, 1 for every day use and 1 for green lines. I vowed then that I would never fly on a VC10 from then on, and I never have.
Would have been better spending the money updating the Victor
