hadley page herald and f27
 

why was the f27 so much more commercially successful compared to the herald

IIRC Handley-Page went down a blind alley initially with 4 piston engines on the Herald (Alvis Leonides?). Fokker opted for twin RR Dart turbo-props from the outset and, by the time HP caught up and redesigned the Herald, Fokker had a 3 year sales lead.

Fokker subsequently seemed to churn out different variants over the years but HP never managed to have much success in that area.

The Herald seemed to have far too much dihedral!

But the seats around the tables in rows 1 & 2 were cool !

Especially when used for loading mail bags :hmm:

Stand by for the Herald guys to come out fighting. If you look at the figures for both aircraft in their initial form I think you'll find they were very similar. One of the problems was political. Sir Frederick refused to be part of the merger (read carve-up) of the industry in the late '50s, early '60s. That resulted in Handley-Page being excluded from the bid for the RAF light tactical transport. That was won by the Andover. Nothing wrong with that, apart from the fact that it was low-wing (sand and gravel ingestion) and had a high floor level (OK, let's add a kneeling undercarriage). Not denigrating the Andover, but the Dart Herald would have been better suited.

Having lost out on that, the market for the DC3 replacement (we're still waiting ;)) was getting pretty crowded, and there was very little development of the Herald, while Fokker continued with the F27.

I'm not biased, but I've got 6,000 hours on the F27. Still, some of my best friends have flown both and can I'm sure give a better answer.

I haven't even flown in a Herald, but I do remember a holiday in Guernsey in 1985. Out on a Viscount standing up on the flight deck (I'd asked the captain for the jump seat having shown him my PPL but there wasn't a jump seat so I stood behind the P2 including t/o and landing). Came back on the jump seat of an F27.

The Viscount was quiet and smooth. But the F27.... How can an aeroplane with half as many Darts be ten times more noisy? :E

I can't remember exact details but the F27 was about 20 to 30 knots faster than the Herald for the same fuel flow due to having less wing area. This gave it a commercial advantage.

The Herald had better short field performance and higher cross wind limits and hence was very popular with Channel Island operators.

I was a SNCO on secondment to the Royal Malaysian Air Force, in the '60's, when it had 8 Heralds. Can't speak for it's flying abilities but I do recall they were very high maintenance.

Fokker struck a clever deal with Fairchild to produce the F27 in the USA. This not only covered more territory (European imports to the US were never well received back then) and gave more prominence but Fairchild had a real success with it and built more than 200, giving Fokker good cash flow back - in fact a Fairchild built aircraft was the first into service.

Meanwhile for the UK focused market the Herald and the 748 were two competing similar-sized designs that split the market between them.

Bear in mind the Herald was not a Handley Page design but was inherited by them when they bought Miles Aircraft of Reading (which is why its model number was HPR7). Miles had designed it as a growth from the useless Miles Marathon, a smaller aircraft with four smaller piston engines. Aircraft from another manufacturer's drawing office do tend to have limited success.

I think the 4 engined prototype herald was flown into alderney and remains the largest aircraft to have landed there. Also, the dart heralds that became operational were prone to major electrical faults.

The Dart Herald's biggerst problem was that it wasn't an AVR748. The F27 was undoubtably a good machine but, arguably, it won orders on price.

ISTR there were also major corrosion problems brought about by spills & leakage from the galley floor?

My father who worked for Handley Page was sent to Gander, Newfoundland with a team of production workers to repair 3 EPA Herald's that had corrosion due to what I thought was leaking toilets.

Speaking from the point of view of being responsible for a fleet of F27s in challenging conditions in Arabia for some years, and then a fleet of Heralds in similarly challenging conditions in N Africe for 6 months, I can assure Herald supporters that the similarities were superficial.

The F27 was reliable and rarely failed to do what was asked of it. This varied from 10 daily rotations BAH-DHA-BAH for 60 day periods between hangar visits (supported only by line maintenance and lots of wheel/brake spares). to ad hoc charters to soft sand strips in Oman with loads from there that were of very uncertain weights but probably well over the LS weight.

The Darts usually needed early overhaul as performance deteriorated from sand erosion; I have seen compressor blades reduced to 40% of their design size taken from engines that were still within performance limits (just). But the airframes just kept on trucking.

Now, turning to the Herald, where do I start? Admittedly they were ACMI aircraft, poorly maintained if at all. But nothing alters the fact that the Herald, in its final form as well as early ones, was unreliable, difficult to operate and maintain, and had dreadful performance. In short it was a dog. I'll leave it to pilots and engineers to explain the technical reasons for this, but believe me it's the case.

In Northern Europe, with good engineering support, there may not be much to choose between them. I wouldn't know. But as soon as conditions became more difficult, especially hot and/or high, the F27 was best, hands down.

PS Didn't the BAe 146 operate regularly into Guernsey? I would guess that it was bigger than a 4-engine early Herald.

Old not Bold, I might have flown on one of your F27s back in the mid 1990s. I was in Oman working on a bid for an IT system for Omani Oil company. We flew into Muscat for a day or so, then took an oil company F27 flight over the mountains into the Empty Quarter. We called at a few sand strips before we reached the strip which was our destination and I remember the rate of climb was not great in the 50C heat of the desert!

We travelled by landy rover across the desert to to the oil camp, and next day after a night at the camp we flew back to Seeb and on home.

It was an interesting experience!

Old, Not Bold. It did indeed, but the poster was talking about Alderney, a whole different kettle of fish.

Shaggy Sheep Driver, it probably was one of mine, but the first word in my name means what it says, so I was long gone!

I'm glad you enjoyed the trip though. When the official shade temperature is 50C, any rate of climb is a gift from God. And the Darts may have been due for overhaul soon. If the aircraft were the same, they would have been 25++ years old in the mid-'90's.

The Heralds in N Africa had to visit Tamanrasset, 6,000 ft AMSL, regularly; there were occasions when all it could uplift was the crew and 2-3 passengers, even at night.

Herod

See comment above about age! How the h**l did I read "Alderney" as "Guernsey"?

I'm surprised that no-one has mentioned that one of them 'looked the part' and the other one was pug-ugly.

The one that looked the part, like most Avro products, was the 748 ... the 'Budgie'.

Yes, I worked with the world's largest fleet of Fokkers (and 'we' operated Heralds also), the HPR7 was something of a joke, known as the dinosaur, slow, ugly and with a corrugated tail, not to say the F27 was anything to smile about and why Fokker stuck with the same 1950's design shape for their F50 ... well that's perhaps why they went bankrupt!

But ... the one that is still flying is the Avro 748!!!

PF. The F27 morphed into the very useful F50. You neglect to mention that the 748 morphed into the ATP, which had to hide itself under the alias Jetstream.