Originally Posted by
wiggy
With my very ex-spotters hat on a question - I always got the impression that for years the reg's on the British register were always issued strictly in a sequence and that the out of sequence tailored regs only started with G-BSST. I did the bulk of my spotting in the 60's/early 70's and don't recall any funnies before Concorde came along. Did I simply lead a sheltered youth or did Concorde start the rot......
Yes, I'm pretty sure Concorde in 1968 was the first wildly out-of-sequence registration, done because G-ASST was already flying (and still is) on a Cessna 150. Before then, you could reserve a registration that would be coming up soon anyway, but it would still be a G-Axxx mark.
There were only a couple over the next few years, notably the Harrier demonstrators G-VTOL and G-VSTO in 1970/71 and the late Ormond Haydon-Baillie somehow charming the CAA into giving him personalised registrations for his pair of T-33s in 1974.
The floodgates opened in about 1977 and we haven't looked back, so to speak.