LTNman. You mention any good tales of Bristol Britannia operations.....
It was a typically foggy night at Luton Airport with a low stratus base that had, as the night progressed, descended on to the surface. An easterly wind meant 08 was in use and, as this was in the good old days, an SRA terminating at a half nautical mile using the ACR430 was the way to go for any aircraft that wished to make an approach. I was working in the tower but unfortunately don't remember who my colleagues were on this occasion. Aircraft movements had been expected to be few and far between without the curse of the weather which had seen most of those scheduled divert elsewhere without even attempting an approach. In the early hours of the morning the clatter of the Lamson tube had delivered a teleprinted flight plan for a freighter Britannia operated by a based cargo airline. To our surprise, at the appointed ETA the aircraft turned up and elected to make an approach. The SRA went without a hitch and the aircraft landed and parked up without incident (apparently). As a grey dawn began to lighten the fog it was my turn to carry out the morning surface inspection so, shivering and cold, I made my way out to the runway in the dreadfully draughty yellow Land Rover. I entered the runway and made the run down to the 08 turning circle and was surprised to see some clods of mud on the southern runway edge which quickly resolved themselves into the mighty tyre tracks of a pair of bogies! I moved over to the Southern runway edge and peered into the fog...The tyre tracks ran off onto the grass and, after a quite tight angular turn, ran parallel to the runway surface but offset about 40/50ft from the actual runway edge! The tyre marks were around a foot deep and this surface penetration seemed to have helped as there was no skidding where the aircraft had made it's sudden turn to regain the runway as the crew must have realised that all the runway edge lights were on the left! One poor edge light had however reached the end of it's life by being squashed flat by the whispering giant. I called the tower and reported my findings to the chagrin of the tower controller who knew that, even in those far off years, there'd be some serious paperwork to follow. On my way back across the apron I stopped behind the prime suspect and saw that, unsuprisingly, the underside of the inboard engine cowlings and some of the aft fuselage was liberally coated with mud. No getting away at the end of the shift for us then! The tower 'senior man' rang the airline to advise them of our findings and, whilst we stood in the tower listening to his prolonged conversation, noticed a small group of personnel run out to the aircraft with yard brushes and buckets and vigorously begin to clean the mud off whilst their 'chief' issued strong denials on the phone that it certainly wasn't them and we should look elsewhere!......
But then things were very different in those days.......
Last edited by Spiney Norman; 11th Aug 2016 at 02:09.