Adverse Jaw
I beg to differ on your comment re "design fault caused Papa India."
Cunningham's testimony at the inquiry stated that we operated the Trident contrary to HS's design philosophy.
This was to retain T/O flap until acceleration point. If this had been carried out than none of the premature droop retractions would have happened.
BEA noise abatement procedure was one of the most foolish procedures that I have ever carried out - except the Vmca at 300ft in the Baron over the English channel.
Very interesting history from SLAST.
The philosophies in BOAC were incredibly different to BEA, I was in the first group that "went across" - there was a movement to send us all back - started by some of the 707 training captains (ex National Service)as we were not up to BOAC standards.
Fortunately I was on the Iron Duck with mostly ex Hamble training captains who understood the deficiencies in BEA.
One point was that I had never used wx radar in my 6 yrs on the Trident!
I think the greatest shock for my first line training captain was when I asked if it was OK to descend and then whether he would mind if I disconnected the autopilot - both standard practices in BEA.
It took me around six months to "get into the grove" and accept that when I flew a sector I made ALL of the decisions - including declaring the only Mayday I made in my career.