Thanks tornadoken.
I think my flight was at Christmas time 53. Returned in a DC3. Remember flying in an Elizabethan to Naples I think in '57, guess that must have been from Heathrow.

. . . although Pan Am landed a 707 at Northolt in 1960 - the crew were headed for LHR R23 & got themselves into a bit of a muddle.

Georgeablelovehowindia

You're right. It was Comet G-ALYW, it took off from London at 1.15 p.m. (G.M.T.) on Tuesday, June 30th 1953.

I was at 5 FTS, RAF Thornhill, Rhodesia at the time and took these photos of the Queen Mum and Princess Margaret as they inspected an RAF Guard of Honour at the nearby town of Gwelo (now Gweru).

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...-July19531.jpg

http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...-July19534.jpg

SORRY
 

The SSK please forgive I had brain failure , a "Senior Moment ", memory loss, and forgot that scheme you are quite right they were all painted later in that colour scheme and the BEA was removed and the word British and the Speedbird badge added after the merger and we also lost our Bealine callsign and became Speedbird But we never had an instructional airframe as such whilst they were in service and the only one that ever did was the Trident 3 that had its wings cropped and used for towing instruction after they all went out of service:{:{:{

<<we also lost our Bealine callsign >>

But for a very long time after, the tugs still used the callsign Bealine. Wonder if they still do??

Beeline is now the official r/t callsign of Brussels Airlines. I haven't operated through LHR for 10 years now but I guess the tug callsigns may have changed in the light of this?

London Airport in my days!
 

My first memories of, what is now, Heathrow was a joy ride for 7 shillings and sixpence, in a Dragon Rapide operated by Island Air Services. They had 3 based at Heathrow and operated from where Terminal 1 is. The trip was a quick circuit, but I can remember the reservoirs and "air pockets", or so I was told by an "experienced" passenger.
My parents also took me to see the aircraft that were taking part in the London to Sydney air race in 1953, I think. There was a Canberra, Viscount and I think a Hastings that I can remember.
In 1958 I started school at New Road Secondary Modern, just across the A4 from the airport. History lessons were best as they were from a classroom on the 3rd floor, making it easy to watch the Skyway's Yorks, BOAC Argonauts, Stratocruisers and Connies taking off to the west. Spotting was carried out at lunchtimes and after school.
Lots more memories, but I'd hate to be a bore! :zzz:

call signs
 

Proberly like Engineering old habits kept it in use, the older engineers used the Beatech callsign for awhile when calling Tech 1,2,and3 out of sheer habit and the BEA hangers were always known as Bealine base for year or two after it became TB E As the late chief engineer John Perkins once said "In Engineering there will never be a British Airways until the last members of the 2 old Corporations has died ".

That's the one I was thinking of. I remember boarding a shuttle to Edinburgh in early 1980 and seeing a Trident in BEA colours, it puzzled me for years until I heard about the one for towing practice. So was it kept in BEA colours all along or repainted as BA then returned to the older livery later?

It was kept in the BEA colours as it was taken over by a appreciation group who looked after it and bought it back to its former glory with I believe BAs blessing till the bean counters found it was costing it MONEY to park it where it was and it was dismantled and taken north [I'm sure our Aircraft spotter friends can give you chapter and verse better than I can] but I believe it has been transferred again to somewhere else , I just hope it will be back in one piece and back to it's former glory soon.though the3 was not my favorait airplane it is the last of its line of work horses and mucked about in the design stage so it never stood a chance against thr B727 it provided me with work over 20 odd years.I belive nearly all the othe Tridents saved are 1s and 2s but I could be wrong [be gentle lads]the rest are on fire dumps.
best of luck to the group who are hoping to rebuild G-ARPO also in the north

Not to put a downer on this lovely thread - but I have to say... Poor old Clipper Victor.

J.

Instructional Airframes
 

At BEAs' Training Centre at the old Viking Centre, near Hatton Cross, was fuselage of one of the prototype Ambassadors which was used for cabin crew training. About 1959-1961? Have a photo of it somewhere, but posting photos on here has so far defeated me.

7 November 1963. We hear on the news that the previous evening an airliner has run off the end of the runway at Heathrow in very foggy conditions and has ended up in a cabbage field. Turns out to be TCA DC8 CF-TJM. After school my friends & I cycle over to the accident site armed with cameras. The area is guarded by a lone policeman, who does not seem to object to us wandering round taking photos.

http://steemrok.com/cftjm/CFTJM%206.jpg

Investigators find that the cause of the incident (in which no-one was seriously injured) was the decision of the captain to reject the take-off at a speed well in excess of V1 because he thought (incorrectly) that the elevator control was defective. Needless to say, there were plenty of extenuating circumstances: there were start-up delays due to the weather, the crew had already done an RTO on 28L due to inadequate visibility before attempting a take-off on 28R and taxying was difficult in the fog, requiring radar assistance from ATC. These and other factors would have depleted the captain's mental capacity.

Incredibly, given the extensive damage incurred, this aircraft was rebuilt. On another thread a poster has referred to 'unlucky' aircraft. Logic suggests that such sentiment is unscientific nonsense. And yet . . . CF-TJM crashed four years later during a training exercise. The three crew on board were killed.

LHR
 

In the Sixties the ATC vans had Callsigns Pixie due the Registration PXE.
One afternoon Ground was trying to contact Pixie with no luck and after one call a voice said Perhaps he has gone Gnome!

<<has ended up in a cabbage field>>

I believe he was told "Follow the greens".

Pixie was in use well into the 90s and may even still be operational..

Used to know the grower of the cabbages and although the quality was high the market value was low. Compensation was the easiest way to sell the crop. I think Air India also helped with the "harvest" and the Vulcan tragedy. Very difficult to asses how many cabbages had already been picked after a DC8 ploughs through them.

Discorde Major (self) & Minor (kid brother) at Hatton Cross in 1957, our first visit to Stanwell Aerodrome. We're watching a DC4 on final approach. But which airline? (No, I don't know the answer!)

http://www.steemrok.com/DC4hattonXv2.jpg

Perhaps PanAm or Air France ?



SHJ

Striped tail and wing motif on nose suggests something rarer - Slick Airways were still operating the DC-4 into Heathrow in '57.

http://www.calclassic.com/Images/dc4slk.jpg

Good spot, 1-11! I scoured my 'Dumpy Book of Aircraft' (1956 ed), my 'Observer's Book of Ditto' (same year) & my Shell-Mex 'Know Your Airliners' (1957 ed) but couldn't find the paint scheme in the pic. That's the great thing about retirement - you can waste hours on such trivia!

(You need to get out more. Ed.)