the OU pair were built with 400 seats

i did not know they took 50 seats out for the ANU/UVF runs

the halcyon hotels still exist today afaik

LIAT was the sister airline in the Carribean

And their HS748s painted in the same scheme as the Courtline 1-11s and TriStars.

As well as Court Helicopters in South Africa.

Tri Star
 

In actuality when the trans Atlantic ops began we departed LGW at MTOM.
After a short time a limitation was imposed based on the one engine out driftdown stabilising altitude. This reduced the RTOM by about 8 tonnes.At that time were refueling in SMA which made for two legs of 4/5hours en route to ANU.Very soon there was a problem getting fuel in The Azores and we had to route via Gander and since the second and longer leg was in driftdown range of the US mainland we were no longer restricted

I was in Southafrica in 1999 visited the small aerodrome at Durban Virginia there was a courtline base here.Aircraft noted s61 Bell 212 and a jet ranger all in the bright Courtline colours bright back happy memories .

BP, Yes the Lockheed flight computer predicated the drift down performance was recalculated every 2,000 feet for burnoff. They found that they could improve the range by re-calc every 500 ft !!
Of course the aircraft did not know any difference !!!
Re South Africa, the Sikorsky did pasenger/ freight supply to ships going round The Cape Town and they did lose one in the sea so they bought one from San Francisco to replace it. Apparently it was quite a challenge because the ships did not want to slow down or change course so in some cases the choper had to run backward when dropping the load !!!

It was great when the Lockheed people were over training Court Line pilots. Having a L1011 in the visual circuit was most entertaining.

A touch and go was called a 'crash and dash'. One day I had the aircraft in the circuit and he called for a touch and go but instead of accelerating, late down the runway, all the reversers came on and it shuddered to a stop at the end. Am American voice came on, laughing, 'he touched the brakes, we hadda stop!' - I gather the spoilers deployed.

As mentioned when I was in Durban in 1999 I did fly in a jet ranger with NAC Airlines from Virginia airport Durban the pilot told me court Helicopters had a contract to drop pilots out to ships of the coast of Durban.I must say the S61 I saw was in a bit of a sorry state.With regards to Courtlines Tristar Did they do crew training flights at stanstead .

Probably not, put perhaps Stansted

I wonder why it is that London'd third airport is mis-spelt so regularly, not just in these forums, but also throughout the media. Is there some sort of glitch in spell checking software. Curiously, not far from me there is a road "Stanstead Avenue" which is surely another example.

Old English place names are a bit of a minefield: Stansted Mountfitchet after which the airport is named is not too far from Stanstead Abbotts, so perhaps your "Stanstead Avenue" example is not an error.

A touch and go was called a 'crash and dash'

Slight post drift. I once spent 3 hours doing touch and goes in an RAF Tristar at Brize, every landing felt as though we fell out the sky!

I'm exactly the same as yourself as I find it so frustrating especially when you see it spelt that way on aviation sites, typical of journalism though such as The Sun newspaper to spell it that manner.

It's not as if the airfields name has ever changed during it's lifetime as it has always been called STANSTED.

We always called it Essex Regional Airport . . . . . ;)

Surely you mean Southend:-) and that definitely isn't a dig at Southend whatsoever!

ATCO, do you remember a Piper Arrow do a gear up landing on the Grass runway at Luton ?

Anyone help with identifying where this photo was taken? The website I found it on says "Leeds June 68" but it is pretty obvious it's at Luton. The aircraft - Ethiopian Air Force Douglas C-54 - sat at the airport for 5 days at the end of June 1968. I'm just puzzled as to where exactly it's parked.

https://i.imgur.com/bymDfxr.jpg

I would say it is next to stand 1. There is something behind it that is probably on stand 1, the hangars to the right look right but the skyline and tail (BAC1-11?) on the left don't look right.

That's the conclusion myself and a colleague have also come to. The aircraft behind the C-54 is probably Falcon 20 N111AC which visited twice while the C-54 was present (26/6-1/7/68). Hangars 7/8 and 61 had blue doors. Hangar 60 I believe was always grey. The 1-11 tail looks like Autair but where is it? It could have been taxying out but seems too far away, and where is hangar 62? The last lighting pylon on the north side was between hangars 61 and 62, so the latter should be there to the left of the C-54.
I'm starting to think the photo may have been edited to remove obvious Luton features like hangar 62 with "Autair" on it then post it as "Leeds 1968". Apologies to whoever if I'm jumping to conclusions.

No Arrow but this aircraft also had a mishap. No idea when though.

https://i.imgur.com/cDk829M.jpg
(Edit) David Gearing Collection