Back in 1978 the airport managed to procure the Stansted Scanair summer programme. This ran from mid-June to mid-August, bringing Scandinavian students to language schools. Ten of these flights were due to operate on S.A.S. DC-10 aircraft, with the rest a mixture of Scanair/S.A.S. and Transair Sweden aircraft (actual programme below). The S.A.S. DC-10 fleet seemed to have reliability problems, and on 3 occasions were substituted by 2 smaller (DC-9/DC-8) aircraft. On 2nd August 1978, the penultimate DC-10 flight was due in empty from Copenhagen at 0630 (DK8955). Rumour the day before was the planned aircraft was AOG somewhere and the flight would operate on an S.A.S. 747. Dan Air were the handling agent and confirmed this. Unfortunately, the weather on the morning in question was diabolical i.e. heavy rain and thunderstorms. I duly arrived at the airport, went to see Dan Air who advised the aircraft would be operating through Stansted instead. This because of the lower regulated TOW imposed by the wet runway, which increased the stopping distance in the event of an emergency during the take-off run. So yes, I drove to STN, in the pouring rain and rush hour traffic, to see what was probably the 1st 747 to be planned into LTN. Apologies for submitting a picture taken "over there".
OY-KHA STN 020878