" and in subsequent years always seemed to attract unfavourable comments from people inside the aviation community.
Was the ATP not fit for purpose, and if so, on what grounds?
Well, to put it politely, and with absolutely no offence intended towards yourself, you will have read the replies as to your question.
Probably the biggest heap of junk ever to gain certification and actually engage in revenue flights thereafter.
Where to begin.....lets start with the shoot bolts on the rear doors freezing solid, and the design resembled the Manx emblem, only with four legs, O2 replenishment ?...for "some considerable time"...erm, remove bottle from aircraft, air stairs...what better place to locate the exterior selection than....a button at the base of the fwd entrance door, the flap drive gearbox....lifted from the 748 and thus the replenishment point was, erm, 5/16 Whit. An engine change ?..about a week give or take...the oil cooler was always "fun"...the engine and airframe anti-ice controllers carefully buried under the fuselage, watching the horizontal stab vibrate in flight...as your meal vibrated itself across the table, one loom on the left had side of the fuselage, held together with tie wraps....the "hand crafted "...thank you, Chadderton, leading edge de-icing boots...the word "interchangeability" being beyond their comprehension, the various holes as an afterthought mod. which should have ben there initially, the "Hearts and Minds" meeting at Woodford, nice sandwiches however, as to the complaints by operators and how, as ever, Waste of Space were "addressing the issues", the completely inaccessible grease nipples on the nose u/c and not forgetting the gust locks....and then there was the ( euphemism ) "Product Support".....
I was involved in a little cost reduction project for the heap and thus went to a few locations, including that little place near Brooklands. .
A nice little scam taking place there, and so wonderfully simple to enact....one example being....hands up anybody who has encountered a static inverter with..an elapsed time counter inside ?. Some of the strip reports were creative enough to win the Man Booker prize....and so easy when, until I arrived, no engineer actually got to read the invoices.
By a "strange coincidence " the project ceased somewhat abruptly shortly thereafter.
BWA at Southend?...nice bunch of hard working guys who really tried to offer a cost effective solution in the case of the escape slides....however, because some of their infrastructure wasn't suitably "glossy and shiny"...always a winner for the morons in procurement at Woodford, they didn't get the contract.
And finally, the proud holder of possibly the shortest flight with an IFSD in history...Loganair ...from Woodford to MAN.