Best Selling British Airliner?
 

Rewatching "When Britain ruled in the Skies" and in the part about the Vickers Viscont IIRC someone said it has sold 480 but he didn't think it was the best selling British Airliner. If not the Viscount then which other plane? Not the 1-11 or the HS 748. Perhaps the Anson but should you count the military sales? Anyone out there with a definitive answer??

Define Airline or is it the most commercial aircraft sold. If the latter then what about the Islander still being built with over 1250 sold so far.

The Islander IS an airliner. Loganair use them (or did) on the inter-island routes around the Orkneys and Shetlands.

BTW, they actually made 445 Viscounts, not 480.

After the Islander, which in many ways was its successor, deHavilland Dragon Rapide . 728 including military but , unlike the Anson, the RAF ones were pretty much identical to the airliners.

deHavillands own Rapide replacement, the more sophisticated Dove ran to 542.

how about say carrying minimum 20 passengers??

that must make it the most successful post war surely

Or pre-"Air Ministers and BOAC directors buying shares in Boeing and cutting domestic builders off at the knees", certainly.

Among jets I think the BAC1-11 will be up there somewhere, BUA, BA, Court Line, Dan Air, BIA etc. and overseas too, the biggest operator of all was Allegheney in the USA.

(Wikie talks about American Airlines being the largest operator but it was Allegheney before they were bought out by AA I think?)

224 BAC One-Elevens according to Wiki (and presumably including the ROMBACs in that number).

Lovely little bird - wonder how it would have fared with Medway and Tay engines on the development roadmap.

I believe the original American operator of the BAC was Mohawk Airlines, based in Ithica, NY. Mohawk was absorbed into Allegheny which later became USAir. Allegheny had a flock of them. I can't remember the Mk of the original Mohawk BAC's, but I seem to remember they had an altitude restriction because they weren't equipped with drop down O2 masks. Braniff also ran the BAC1-11 I believe. If anybody at BAC had had the foresight later shown by Dee Howard and equipped the aircraft with RR Tays, it would have been a whole other ball game in my opinion.

Edited to add a link to some piccies.

George Hamlin Mohawk photos.

Of those already mentioned the running order is Viscount with 444, HS748 with 381 (however 89 of these were built in India) and BAC 1-11 with 244 (a handful built in Romania).

There are however a couple of better performers.

SC7, 330, 360 with 454 built and the winner, the J137/J31/J41 with 557 built. In the unlikely event you consider the J61/ATP part of the marque this increases to 632. Either way the Jetstream is the winner.

Of equal interest may be the least aircraft built and delivered for the civil market. It is more difficult to get the numbers for this but the Marathon 44 but 28 military, Vanguard 44 and VC-10 54 – but 14 for the military must be up there.

Worldwide, the Potez 840 = 7, Mercure = 12 and VFW614 = 19 must be among the least built – any other ideas?

there is some confusion...American Airlines did operate the BAC 1-11 and called it something else like the BAC 400 or seomthing like that.

Aleghany Airlines operated the BAC1-11 for quite awhile including under the USAIR Livery. I could have bid the BAC1-11 but took the DC9 instead. Big stove pipe like noise reduction devices were placed on the plane near the end of its service life. Indeed, all the old guys Knew that BAC was so ingrained into the airline that the multiple choice exams were always BAC in their choice: example..answer 1 = B, Answer 2 = A, Answer 3 = C and then repeating.

Does the Handley Page and later BAE Jetstream regional airliner count????? I flew the Original Jetstream for awhile , even the one used in the Bond film.

good luck you guys.

The BAe146/RJ, with just under 400 built (though not all delivered) is second to the Viscount, ahead of the 748 and 1-11.

7stoker you sound like an ex-Agony guy, what was the name of that high-wing purple painted abortion they flew with the what-looks-like-pitot-tubes-but-is-really-part-of-the-autofeather-system sticking out the top of the nacelles?

Nord 262
 

That was the French built Nord 262, ordered by Lake Central Airlines in the mid 1960s to replace their DC3s. Within a year or so the intractable problems with their Turbomeca Bastan engines drove the airline into bankruptcy & they were merged into Allegheny. After 7-8 yrs, Allegheny refurbished & re-engined the Nords with PT-6s & farmed them out to their commuter system as Mohawk 298s.

From the same programme - Bristol Brabazon 1 built - Sales 0

Not forgetting the ATL Accountant and the Saro Princess ...

IIRC American Airlines had the biggest fleet of One-Elevens with 30 401AKs delivered in 1966.
By 1971 they were being sold as they were too small.
They called them "Astro Jets", I think.

In the 60s, American referred to most of their jet fleet as "Astrojets".

Here's a more recent example in the same retro scheme:

http://airchive.com/photos/2008/04/a...rojet_2446.jpg

Thanks Bob, that's the one I was thinking of. Were you at Piedmont? Piedmont used to handle the prop and gear o/h's for our corporate Fairchild.