Trident at Booker.

[blind pew]

Trident 1s were re-engined in the 60s iirc.
Hot summers day take off weight limited out of home base.
Infamous incident T3 out of Malaga lost a donk and diverted to Madrid as a larger station without anyone checking the missed approach climb/ WAT limits. As often happened incompetent controller lined up an Iberia which led to a missed approach going down hill; skipper then on the ball..pointed nose down towards lower terrain, accelerated, cleaned up and did a circuit: the Trident on approach was well on the back side of the drag curve.

[bean]

Originally Posted by chevvron

I remember seeing 737s inbound to 08 at Luton in 1967; they used to turn in overhead Halton whilst we were gliding there. They were certainly in service with Britannia befoere 1968.

Your recollections are very faulty.
Brittannia received their1st 737 in July 1968: late delivery necessitating lease og BKS and Laket Brits (one each)

[oldandbald]

Britannia 737s As far as I am aware first 737-200 for Britannia was G-AVRL delivered to Luton July 8th 1968. I am told G-AVRL Boeing 737-204 c/n 19709 line number 38 - Registered to Britannia Airways Ltd 14.07.1967 - First flown at at Seattle 28.06.1968 - Handed over to Britannia Airways at Seattle 07.07.1968 and delivered Seattle-Montreal-Goose Bay arriving at Luton 08.07.1968.

[DaveReidUK]

AFAIK, the only 737s to be seen in Europe before Britannia's deliveries were Lufthansa's 737-100s from December 1967 onwards.

[DHfan]

If Wiki is to be believed, Lufthansa as launch customer received their first 737 on 28/12/67 and it/they didn't enter service until February 1968.

I realised fairly early on that I had no interest in modern airliners and apart from the obvious like a 146 or a 747, I can't tell one from another unless it's written on the tail.

[chevvron]

Originally Posted by bean

Your recollections are very faulty.
Brittannia received their1st 737 in July 1968: late delivery necessitating lease og BKS and Laket Brits (one each)

Sorry I must be a year out then unless another carrier operated 737s in/out of Luton in '68; the date I have was May which looks too early for a BY flight.
Certainly when I joined NATCS as an assistant at West Drayton in Mar 69, 'RM and 'RN were regulars in/out of Luton although I don't recall 'RL being flight planned.
My first flight with BY in a 737 was in GAXNC in Mar '75 when I managed to break the aircraft! I was on an ATCO Familiarisation Flight Luton - Madrid and return and as I entered the flight deck and went to shut the door in order to unfold the jump seat, the emergency exit hatch set in the door fell out - just popped out in me 'and guv!!

[pax britanica]

Tridents and speed

I remember two occasions where the flight deck cheerfully pointed out how fast the trident could go . Once going to Stockholm we overtook a Scandi DC9 which the captain said had left LHR 15 mins in front of us and we caught up by the Danish coast, I guess he knew the call sign/flt number as about every other aircraft around there would have bena Scandi DC9 .

Othertime was Rome to LHR and we overtook a VC10 en route , this seemed to give the crew particular pleasure to be going faster than 'the other lot''

As to the Gripper nickname having seen innumerable take offs from what was 28L the Trident didnt look too bad. It couldnt match the DC9s , the Comet4Bs it was replacing, or the occasional 707s (only going as far as Brussels or Paris ) or even Caravelles. but of course, 2 engined airliners are all somewhat overpowered since they need to survive with one if there s a problem and back then i dont think there was much reduced thrust take off going on. I think the Trident was going pretty fast at unstick speed compared to some bigger-winged/more modern types so perhaps that made it look more scary.

As to the boost engine , that amde a distinctive noise and was clealry different from the 1s and 2s. I think it was more widely used than has been suggested I often saw/heard them use in departing 10R which even if they left from one of the intersections (block79) it was still a pretty long runway. Tridents used to emit wisps of white smoke/steam as they started rolling any ideas what that was about. of course it was nothign to the clouds of muck from CV990s, 727s and even Electras

[chevvron]

I was in the tower at Glasgow for about 6 months in 1972 and was able to observe the booster being lit many times; just as they were passing the control tower taxying out on 24 (now 23) , first there would be a plume of vapour then a gout of flame as the engine lit.

[WHBM]

In their last years of service I was in a T3 on a Manchester-Heathrow Shuttle, in the rearmost of those rear-facing seat rows in the forward cabin. Directly opposite, forward-facing, was my right grumpy old client. Short sector, light weight, as we lifted off and climbed out the angle was such that, had it not been for my seatbelt, I would have landed squarely in the growling old so-and-so's lap. And by his facial expression he suddenly thought so too !

Definitely NOT a Gripper !

[Discorde]

Originally Posted by blind pew

Infamous incident T3 out of Malaga lost a donk and diverted to Madrid as a larger station without anyone checking the missed approach climb/ WAT limits. As often happened incompetent controller lined up an Iberia which led to a missed approach going down hill; skipper then on the ball..pointed nose down towards lower terrain, accelerated, cleaned up and did a circuit: the Trident on approach was well on the back side of the drag curve.

The boost engine on the T3 had a couple of restrictions: if used for take off it had to be shut down before climbing above 6000 ft and once shut down it could not be relit in flight (although relight capability became available in later years). So the Madrid crew were operating with only two of their three-and-a-half engines available and might not have been aware that their approach to a high elevation airport exceeded the go-around WAT limit in the circumstances prevailing.

[blind pew]

Obviously discorde..not helped by our documentation, the way it was formulated and how the criteria was (or wasn’t) communicated.
I was always amazed at how good we were at saving fuel compared with the plog (later sword) until one of the opposition ex fuel saving committee explained that contingency fuel was included in the route fuel and all were calculated at max take off weight rather than a realistic weight based on forecast load.
At a guess Cyprus had a better understanding of the latter which was the reason they had a higher success rate at not tech stopping.
They peed pass one day and we laughed at the fools..they had gone home by the time we got into queen’s.