BEA Trident London - Moscow 1971
 

I notice from the BOAC 1971 timetable that there was a Trident Service (BE 670) operated by BEA from Heathrow T1 to Moscow (I assume Sheremetyevo-2) 3X weekly (Otherwise BOAC 707).

BOAC 1971 Timetable London-Moscow Section

Was this a Trident 3B, and was it operating at the limits of its range?

Just curious that a Trident operated this route!

Thanks.

More likely a T2E - they operated London-Moscow from 1968 onwards.

Certainly Trident 2E - checking my fathers log books - always a 2 from in his case from Feb 1970 through to Oct 1974. Flight time around 3:20 outbound and 3:40 return - there and back in a day as the logistics of crew hotels etc were horrendous. I recall that the routing was tightly prescribed to ensure they were kept away from certain installations. Certainly one of the longer flights but the Tridents 2's used to do Tel Aviv non stop with an outbound leg of around 4:30 and return legs up to 5:05. Interestingly when he switched to TriStars the Tel Aviv flights were always 15 - 20 minutes longer as not much could keep up with the Trident certainly before they were restricted to M0.8 in Oct 1973.

Tel Aviv scheduled as non stop in T2 but remember a couple of tech stops in Geneva inbound due adverse winds!

I always laugh about the T3 - designed to be longer with a greater capacity until someone realised it couldn't get off the ground! So they put in a fourth mini-engine with an on/off switch (!). It basiclly has two settings; full power for take-off and "off"! Talk about Heath Robinson!!

Now that is a surprise... always thought the Tridents were short(ish)-range. Many thanks for the very interesting input.

Didn't BEA get as "far" as Cairo too?

It was worse than that; quite a sad saga that explains quite a lot about why we Brits weren't very good at selling aeroplanes outside UK.

In the beginning (of this saga) Hawker Siddeley had on the drawing board the HS121. It was about T3 sized, and planned to use three RR Medway engines. It might have been a viable competitor to the later B727, taking the market that went to that aeroplane.

But BEA said "it's far too big. Make it titchy and we'll buy some". So they did, the ludicrously undersized T1. Later they upgraded that to the T2 at BEA's request, about the limit for Speys (the Medway was never produced once the HS 121 was ditched).

Eventually BEA woke up to the size of aeroplane they should have bought in the first in the first place, and asked HS to make the T2 bigger yet.

So they stretched the T2 and added the RB162 boost engine, a compact turbojet that had been developed as one of many lift engines for vertical lift in the days before the brilliant Harrier defined that technology.

So the T3 was an abomination. Four engines (so not a TRIdent anymore?), five if you include the APU.

Now if BEA had simply ordered the original HS121 in the first place.... Or if HS had stuck to their guns and marketed their 121 internationally despite BEA.....

[QUOTE][Didn't BEA get as "far" as Cairo too?/QUOTE]

Not on Tridents at least between 1966 and 1974 from my fathers records.

His only Cairo flights were whilst training Cyprus Airways crews on their Viscount 800's which were at least initially loaned from BEA, painted in a composite livery and had at least some local cabin crew. G-AOYK being used for the proving flights to and from Nicosia in around 1:45 in October 1965.

Maybe others might know if any of the BEA Comet 4's ever went to Cairo.

Tridents only ever had three engines............

From the BOAC timetable 1971 again:

Cairo Page 1971 BOAC Timetable

Seems to be a VC-10 at least in the later BOAC days, like Moscow I am sure they would include BEA flights in the timetable for any BOAC routes.

Great story, but the realisation came as soon as the T2E had flown that the Spey 512 didn't have any growth potential that would allow 3 of them to power a stretch.

Tridents, and indeed Comets before them, went to all the eastern Med points, most commonly through Nicosia in Cyprus, also served nonstop by both types (Tel Aviv is actually visible on the horizon when you are at altitude over Cyprus). BEA had a longstanding codeshare agreement with Cyprus Airways, who didn't have their own aircraft in the 1960s, on this. The Comets got to Beirut, Cairo, and for a while further, to Damascus, Kuwait, Bahrain and Doha, which are the farthest destinations served by BEA aircraft and crews. I think this 1961 timetable has BEA Comets to all the points mentioned.


http://www.timetableimages.com/ttima...61/be61-17.jpg

and no, BOAC, despite showing many other partners, only sparingly included any such flights in their timetables - and in return BEA never showed BOAC ones in theirs.

Separately to this, BEA in the 1960s provided two Viscount 800s to Cyprus Airways, which did their local regional flights. I believe the BEA square logo in the cheatline (but not the big red one on the fin) was replaced by a CY logo for the duration, which for each of the two aircraft typically lasted for about 3 months before coming back to Heathrow for a check and being replaced.

Once the Comets had gone a Trident was all BEA had for Moscow, loads could be notably thin at times and there are stories of them being down to single figures in winter. Aeroflot ran Tupolev 104s on the route, changing over to Ilyushin 62s around 1970. It was almost unknown for Soviet nationals to be on the BEA flight, despite each only operating on a few days a week. The BOAC 707 Moscow flights were a separate operation through to Tokyo, which started in 1971, the "Russiaway to Japan" route, for which they had to buy two new and specially equipped 707s actually after they started taking delivery of 747s - which were not permitted on the Siberia route for many years afterwards.

I read an interesting novel in about 1971 involving Tridents going to Moscow.
The story went the USSR managed to secrete an imitation nuclear device in the Houses of Parliament and challenged the British government to see if they could do something similar.
A plot was devised whereby the Moscow bound Trident would take off from Heathrow and would be stealthily joined by a Buccaneer carrying an imitation nuclear weapon. They would fly in close formation so as to present only one blip on radar, the Trident would somehow break off from the Buccaneer and land elsewhere (Copenhagen I think) and the Bucc would carry on on the flight planned route to deliver its payload in Red Square.
I don't remember the name of the book or who wrote it I'm afraid and some of the detail may be wrong, but in those days it was an intriguing tale!

I remember flying Tel-Aviv to Heathrow in 1974 in a T2. As I recall it was a full load on a sweltering hot day...and from a backwards-facing seat it felt like I was watching those L/E droops struggling over the Med for ages before we got cleaned up and gained a bit of altitude. Papa India was still a recent memory so my interest in such details might be forgiven.

Incidentally, as a member of the Trident nostalgia club, I very much enjoy Blind Pew's contributions on this and related subjects. More please!

Goofer

On a memorable trip to Israel with a BEA mate on an ID90 in about 72-73, when the T2 stopped at the terminal there was a PA announcement instructing everyone to remain seated. A couple of scowling characters with Uzis came on board, walked up and down the aisle scrutinizing everyone before stopping at our seat and gesturing for us to follow them down the steps, where we were given the third-degree (thankfully no rubber gloves were involved) before they politely wished us a pleasant stay in Israel.

Slats on the T2; only the T1C had droop leading-edges.

Definitely Trident 2E's flew to Moscow and also as far as Tel Aviv. The T3 lacked the range; I believe Athens was the furthest a T3 flew. The T3 would venture into Libya via Malta as well as Tunis, Casablanca. I am the proud owner of a T3 (G-AWZI), all be it just the nose section (restored in her BEA colours and on display at the FAST Museum, Farnborough airport); over the years I have built up a log of some of her flights during her career with BEA/BA 1971-1985. The information taken from visiting Trident pilots and their log books. It does make a fascinating reading.

I first flew Moscow on the T2 in 1972. There was what you might call a non cooperation pact between the corporations in the BEA management created an open hostile atmosphere towards BOAC; probably they rightly believed that the government would get BOAC to sort us out. That's the reason behind the timetables. (BEA wouldn't give concessionary flights to BOAC).
This was a time when the BEA guys were flying through thunderstorms in the Berlin corridors because of the risk of being shot down. We used to look out for Russian fighters but I never heard of one being seen - the closest I ever came to anything exciting was seeing a ground to ground missile tracking low level across Germany at night.
We carried Helsinki alternate fuel and there were occasions of tech stopping but probably because of take off weight restrictions. Interestingly BEA could operate into airfields that were closed to Swissair because of runway contamination - even more puzzling because the Munich disaster happened due to contamination and BEA had ignored two accidents.
One would have thought that a carrier who operated most winter days onto ice or slush covered runways would know better ;-)

The approach was different because the charts showed right angled tight turns and you basically made your own intercepts...sometimes going straight through the centre line and then turning back to intercept the ILS.

Fuel;
It wasn't until recently that I understood the fuel calculation policy in BEA...this has relevance to the tech stopping. Often the fuel was calculated at MTOW whatever the TOW and included contingency fuel. The fuel score was calculated on fuel burnt and didn't take into consideration of lower consumption at lighter weight - so was unduly pessimistic.
There was some other regulation that we had to arrive at destination with alternate fuel and 30mins holding; although a couple of management pilots would ignore this - the mentality carried on and nearly lead to the loss of a droop snoop and a 747.

Flying out of Nicosia I tech stopped in Munich or Frankfurt whilst Cyprus airways T2s steamed past us at high speed and flew direct.
Cyprus Airways was basically a BEA operation (AerLingus was also partly owned by BEA) except they had polished wings whilst we had the pealing red ones - this was banded around by our training department as to why they could do LHR in one hit.
In reality I think they understood the fuel policy better and minimum drag/ specific fuel consumption.
One has to understand that aviation knowledge still isn't cut and dried. A former colleague told me that when he went onto Concorde in the 80s they didn't understand how to operate her properly, that minimum drag was around 400 knots and they had been flying her around too slowly with engine failures.
I can understand there is more than a grain of truth in that as I thought I was going to loose the roof from my thatched cottage near Newbury one stormy night after an engine went into reverse upon rotation out of LHR. - The crew managed to nurse her to 3,000 ft over the Bristol Channel.

Similarly I made a contribution to gliding safety 15 years ago as winching wasn't being taught properly and only a month ago I questioned the control design on my latest paraglider (after a few hours of flying close to mountains and checking the performance).There are just so many variables in aviation.

So on the Nicosia and Tel Aviv some of the captains would get us wallowing along at M.8 instead of M.86 which gave a distinct lower nose attitude and hence, along with Ram recovery factor, a better SFC.

Tel Aviv.
Last week a colleague posted two horrific incidents on Tridents; the latter lead to an immediate visit to management and a conversion course onto the Transavia 737.
Very few pilots take into consideration Temp inversions. I nearly crashed into the Schwarzwald flying a MD80 because of the performance loss and windshear.

From Tel Aviv we had to cross the coast above 1,000 ft because of the military protecting the coast line. In summer it was impossible.
My colleague had got airborne (just) and at 200 ft they hit a strong inversion (and probably a tail wind).
The aircraft stopped climbing and faced with the looming Hilton and Sheraton hotels they fire walled the throttles - which didn't make an awful lot of difference on the Spey because of the fuel control unit except they over temperatured them and had to be changed.
They flew between the hotels and managed to eventually accelerate over the sea.

What had been demonstrated at Madrid a few years before after a T3 diversion following an engine failure out of Malaga was to lower the nose - clean up and accelerate to 230 - 260 knots and the Trident will climb and handle quite nicely.
(Madrid ATC lined up an Iberia aircraft on short finals - typical crap from some of the highest paid controllers).

I don't know the exact min drag speed as no one IIRC ever talked about it and climb performance is dependent on ram recovery factor as well but in descent the bird seemed to fly forever around 250knots.

On a political note I was never worried about Moscow as one forgets that without the Russians the Germans would have won the war.
From the 60s the corporations recruited civil pilots as "military" along with women, gays and Johnny Foreigner don't make good crew members. I was one of the Hamble "mafia" as a Sleazy Jet pilot called us.

It wasn't until I flew with ex post war RAF and Luftwaffe pilots that I realised that this was horse s@@t; Importantly they also told me that whilst they trained to fight the Russians the security briefing was that WW3 would be between Europe and USA.
Whilst America had the boom times in the 50s we still had rationing until 1953 (have my book of stamps still).
My father was a translator for de Gaulle ...he told me that Churchill and de Gaulle betrayed the resistance to the Nazis so that France would remain fascist (the files are in the national archives at Kew but restricted for 100years).
Whilst politically naive what the Troika gets up to along with Snowden's release on Clinton/Sarkosy/Libya and the latest Panama files probably shows that Russia was never a real threat and just a bogey man just as all Muslims apparently are.
Happy days.

This sort of sounds like "Flight of the Bat". In that story the Soviets dropped a V-2 type missile sans warhead on to somewhere in London - it may have been Hyde Park - and the U.K government then decided to do the same to let the Soviets know that we could do something similar.
The Bat was an obviously renamed TSR2. It (the Bat) took off for Moscow, the noise of the night take off being disguised by a Lightning lifting off with it and then, after an AAR from a Valiant it dropped it's inert payload into Red Square. I believe the book came out about 1965.
It wasn't a very good book, I've no idea who the author was.

A quick Google shows this as an option:
http://pictures.abebooks.com/BOOKSFR...5578754509.jpg

Trident 3 G-AWZT was on Heathrow to Istanbul when it was in the midair over Yugoslavia in 1976.


Pretty unbelievable ... except by Mathias Rust !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

WHBM - you are quite correct; but I think after the wing cracks were detected (1977/78) on the T3's and strengthening plating had to be installed their range was reduced due to the extra weight / fuel burn?

Ahh the good old uncle Charlie's landing technique - when asked about cross wind landings and which one he recommended allegedly said "fly it onto the runway - the undercarriage is strong enough"... Didn't mention the wing spar on the T3 though ;-)

In all truth the larger capacity Trident 3s were most suited for the densest but quite short routes from Heathrow, to Paris (when not Tristar operated), Amsterdam, and the UK Shuttle trunks. These didn't need a lot of fuel and didn't get a lot of freight, so were quite lightweight. There were sufficient 2Es for the longer runs.

The shortfall in 3B capacity while the wing mods were being done led to BOA- um, er, BA Long Haul Division loaning a couple of spare VC-10s to BE - um, er, BA European Division, to cover things, to an extent that they appear formally scheduled in a 1979 timetable I have, to Amsterdam, Lisbon, etc.

Blind pew, if you were flying the Shuttle routes at the end of their Trident operation in the early 1980s, I quite likely was pax behind you. Did you make that stunning departure I had from Manchester for Heathrow one afternoon when I was seated in the final rearward-facing seat row, looking at my new, prospective, serious client in the first forward-facing row opposite, who were it not for my seatbelt would have got me slam in his face when we rotated on liftoff. "Gripper" my a**e !

My log book shows I operated GAVFM to Moscow on 14/5/69 flight time 3.20 and 3.45 return
Again on 22/9/69 GAVFH 3.20 outbound but on the return diverted into Copenhagen Kastrup with an engine problem
Operations to moscow were always interesting as diversion airfields ( available to western airlines) were at a premium and fuel to divert to Helsinki was tight.

As a passenger-on dads subload tickets i loved Tridents and thought them very comfortable :went all over Europe on them. Longest trip was T2 to Cyprus , pitching up a ta BA office in Kyrenia i think we asked about loads for the following night a Monday only to be told -we might get you away on Thursday because of a medical conference taking all the seats. Off to Nicosia-as it was then- that night to await the transiting BOAC VC10 in the hope of a seat-no chance couple of other flights that day another BOAC and the regular T2 and we ares till stuck altho some sub load pax get away on these. But patience tells and alte afternoon full Cyprus Airways flight has 4 pax no shows. , There you go lads but you will have to run -and run we did , no security in those days and made it home.
Also the interchange of aircraft due to various ATC strikes etc , went to faro on honeymoon an clapped out Airtours 707 436 , deafening at the back. A week later and the return is a shuttle configured T3 which was full but managed Faro London Ok.

i never knew what a poor performer close to the ground it was until going to Rome with a friend who was a BOAC 707 FO who really didn't like the idea of sitting backwards and who regaled us , no doubt BOAC bias added, about how tricky the Trident was near the ground.

So I ahd alot of fun and adventures with tridents and think of them fondly and enjoyed greatly looking round the nose section at FNB

Lovely thread and very nice of the guys who flew wha was for its time quite an innovative machine with there experiences of the days before the magenta line
PB

Tridents in China
 

This thread stirred happy memories of a trip to Shanghai and on to Beijing in 1982.

As we are boarding an American tourist asks my boss what kind of jet this is. Boss replied, beaming with pride, that "actually it's a British jet, a Hawker Siddeley Trident." Tourists wife freaks.... "Oh my God, I used to own a Triumph Stag!"

On board one of the passengers having trouble getting the seat belt threaded through the buckle because the strap was severely frayed. No problem, out comes an impressive chef's knife and after chopping off 3" from the strap all is well.

Landing in Beijing was interesting.... cruising altitude maintained until over the airport followed by what felt to all was a spiral dive for the runway and some serious braking to finish up with a very high speed turn-off at the far end.... someone suggested the pilots were ex-military, but they seemed current enough to me.

I also recall an RR engineer on that flight saying that the Spey test stand was out of service... apparently the concrete base was not well secured to the underlying mud with alarming results at high thrust.

Times change, all very spiffy now.

PJ

Just a little more information having come across an old BEA timetable for Spring 1970.

Moscow flights to Sheremetievo Airport

Flight BE910 Mo, We, Fr departs 1050 arrives 1615 – non stop with the return Flight BE911 after a 65 minute turnaround departs 1720 arrives back at LHR at 1855.

The timetable also gives the Aeroflot reciprocal flight on Tu Th Sa by Il62.

First Class return fare £102; Economy return fare £77.25p; excess baggage at £1.05 per kilogramme.

Nicosia flights

Flight BE296 on Sats only departs 2230 arrives 0330 – non stop with the return Flight BE297 after a 75 minute turnaround departs 0445 arrives back at LHR at 0820.

Flight BE298 on Sats only departs 1545 arrives 2045 – non-stop with return Flight BE299 after a nightstop departing at 1100 arriving back at LHR at 1435.

All other Trident flights are via Rome or Athens and with the last leg via a Cyprus Airways flight sometimes code shared but all listed as being on Tridents.

First Class return fare £124; Economy return fare £82.70p; excess baggage at £1.24 per kilogramme.


Tel Aviv flights

Flight BE221 Sun only departs 1050 arrives 1615 – non stop with the return Flight BE222 after a 50 minute turnaround departs 1705 arrives back at LHR at 2055.

All other flights are via Rome or Rome and Athens.

First Class return fare £140.25; Economy return fare £94.70p; excess baggage at £1.41 per kilogramme.


Timetable seating plans show 16 forward facing First Class Seats; 36 rearward facing Tourist seats and 40 forward facing Tourist seats.

It was even worse than being worse than that! BEA, around 1965/6, actually had the cheek to try to get permission to buy 727s as the Trident was "too small". Not surprisingly the Government refused and told them to buy Hatfield's less than satisfactory stretch (and One-Eleven 500s rather than the 737s they wanted).

Around 1972/3 a T2E G-AVYE was based at BHX flying mainly to ORY. What was the difference between that and a T2?

All BEA/BA's Trident 2s (which were the only ones of that mark built) were designated Trident 2E.

But G-AVYE was a Trident 1E, which was a souped-up version of the 1C (featuring the infamous 7-abreast configuration).

But not 7-abreast with BEA at BHX - thank heavens!

During A re-engine of Trident 1C during the mid 60s there was a period when it was possible to have 3 different models of Spey on the same airframe. 505/10, 505/5E and 505/5F all with different operating limits. It made for interesting T/O calculations

http://www.shockcone.co.uk/hs121/tri...es/1ecabin.jpg

yikes!

The 7-across Trident 1E was an order for five aircraft for Channel Airways, a real bottom-feeder carrier of the time where Sqn Ldr Jack Jones, who ran it, packed as many seats as he could into their fleet (quite small but very varied).

Their Tridents were an extraordinarily complex type for an airline who had previously had nothing bigger than Viscounts or DC4s, and was compounded by their main base at Southend not even having a runway long enough to operate them from (I once used up most of it landing a Cessna 152 there, but that's a different story :eek: ), so their Tridents had to operate from Stansted. However they were also short of cash, as ever apparently, so three of the five were never delivered and just sat at hatfield, one was eventually sold by Hawker Siddeley to Ceylon and two more to BKS, Channel only taking delivery of two aircraft with this seating arrangement. They still had no real good Mediterranean charter contracts for them, one aircraft was finally placed with a West Berlin travel company operating from Tegel, while the other was grounded AOG at Stansted being steadily robbed for spares to keep the first going, Channel having run out of any credit with Hawker Siddeley by this time (they simultaneously did the same with BAC for some new One-Elevens they ordered). When Channel went under early in 1972 the Tridents joined BKS, later renamed Northeast, which was owned by BA and that's how they eventually all got onto the BA fleet. The 7-across seating had long gone. I bet the maintenance records raised some eyebrows at Heathrow.

You will notice the squashed seating is only in the forward half of the cabin, it was 6-across at the rear, as I understand HS could only make the evacuation limits work for this number. The smaller seats were (in theory) assigned to families with small children, but I bet that never worked out on the day.

Hmm. Had a girlfriend once (yes me!) who did a stint as a stewardess with 'Channel Scareways' (as she called it) until they went bust.
I think I recognise the stewardess in that photo!

WHBM
Never flew the three as for a long time it was deemed too difficult to fly three marks but when more competent management arrived all four types were flown by the same crew.
I had migrated to the VC10 by then...one of the stories when the VC10 was flying on European routes whilst the T3s where being repaired was of a crew delaying a Frankfurt whilst catering fetched some bone china as they weren't prepared to accept the s@@t brown, handleless Bakelite mugs that BEA crews had to endure.
18 months later I was flying four different types of DC 9 without any problems..different engines..wing/fuselage incidence...loading..fuel systems and one was a freighter.
Shows what Johnny Foreigner can do ;-)

For those of you who have not learned to take Blind Pew's tales of derring do with a pinch of salt I have an alternative opinion on why the Tri 3b was introduced to BEA as a separate flight.

By not requiring the soon-to-be-retiring senior men to becom multi-qualified it gave management the opportunity to promote to the top fleet relatively junior captains from Vanguards who were the ones with lots of jet experience as RAF pilots and Comet co-pilots. They were also the ones who believed in training rather than checking.

Bill these RAF pilots ex Vanguards and Comets who were such wonderful trainers...would they be the same ones whose genesis was a peacetime airforce that lost 200+ airframes in one year in the 60s..had some fleet loses (%) greater than the Starfighter and trained those that stalled a Comet,Vanguard and a Trident 1 with 100% loss of life?

Please answer a question for me - what was the point of knowing how many static wicks the Trident possessed or does your definition of training differ from mine?

If you don't know how many are supposed to be on the airframe, how will you know if any are missing?