Originally Posted by
philbky
The compressor blades were the only plastic parts, the compressor case was fibreglass, the rest was metal.
Point taken, but Mr Coley still wouldn't have paid much for them, and fairing over the hole in the back end would have been horrendously expensive, so I don't think removing the RB162 would ever have been a realistic option.
When were you making your trips?
Late 70s/early 80s.
The use of particular Trident 3 aircraft dedicated to shuttle work seems to have started around 1978 when Trident 1s were being relegated to back up work. Certainly not all dedicated aircraft had their RB162s decommissioned at one go and there were rotations where non dedicated aircraft provided back ups once the Trident 1 withdrawal programme began.
Certainly by the time I left BA there were a number of T3s (around half-a-dozen, I seem to recall) dedicated to Shuttle. The last one wasn't retired until 1986, several years after I left, so use of the RB162 may well have ceased prior to that.
And it certainly wasn't unusual to see several things placarded "Inop" on the Trident flight deck.
