Originally Posted by
Hussar 54
Was there really any serious interest from possible / potential customers, or was the project already too far ' behind ' the twin aisle offerings which were already being developed by Boeing, Lockheed and McD D to have found a place in the market ?
I think it was a bit of both. There was certainly interest in a larger VC10, as evidenced by the initial specification for the Super VC10. From Vickers' point of view, they had a large design staff and it is important to keep a department like this busy to avoid having to lay off people. So when they ran into problems selling the VC10 they tried their best to come up with as many variants as possible in the hope that this would attract a new order. As we know by now, this did not happen unfortunately.
From BOAC's point of view, they certainly looked at larger capacity airliners but remember that this was a point in time when there was no 747/DC-10/Tristar in sight yet. Taking on such a double-deck behemoth was a huge risk and obviously they were not happy enough at that point to order any from Vickers. I think that although the thoughts about the wide-body types that would eventually fly were already well advanced in Seattle and the other design departments in the US, it was too soon for the UK to commit to such a large project.