Bae ATPF
 

2 Bae ATPF large freight door cargo aircraft arriving in Indonesia this month.

Just wondering if anyone here has flown or maintained the cargo or pax version in the past and what the good , bad and quirky points of the aircraft are from a pilot's and engineering perspective.

Should be an advert in Flight International this week looking for crews and engineers on short term contracts until the locals can operate independently, be prepared to work in Irian Jaya :bored:

Bae ATPF
 

I hear they will be joining PT Deraya Air, what will be the operation please ?

General cargo ops around Papua and eastern Indonesia

ATPF:

ATP = "Another Technical Problem".

I wonder what the "F" could possibly stand for! :)

First Flight Couriers in India Used to operate a few of those ATP's a couple of years ago, But stopped their operations of the ATP's due to relative dispatchability and low cruising speed compared to the other turbo props in this category.

Maybe some of those will be transferred to Indonesia. :ok:

Indonesia would be ideal country for ATP ops, this is one of a few countries where ATP have a chance to show very good dispatch reliability, because anything less than failed engine would not delay a departure, and engines are quite ok on this aircraft ;)

ATP
 

10 years ago I urged the BAe management at Prestwick to convert an airframe to cargo and start selling freighters. They would not stand the cost of a conversion, saying they will wait until a customer is prepared to pay for one. Seems the only ones flying now ARE cargo config.

Shame.

It's quiet, doesn't really use fuel and has a decent payload. It is fairly slow, but why does freight care what time it gets to the next warehouse?


It has excellent despatch records once the engineers and crew know what they are doing. Like any addition to a fleet, there may be initial teething problems, not due to the aircraft.

I’m a B1 Technician, working on the ATP in north Sweden at the moment, if the aircraft is looked after, it will give you very few problems, the biggest problems we have is replacement trim for the cabin, on a freighter, you don’t have that problem.

You would be suprised but the freight carried in Europe onboard of ATPF is indeed cares about the time of getting into next warehouse. Let alone the fact express mail operators considering on-time departure as within 1 minute from schedule, not 10 or 15 min like pax airlines.

Phileas, my dear sir.

ATP - Advanced Technical Problem if you please.

The problems are well known and just need proper spending to keep at bay. Freighters ? the purse may not open that often but who knows ?

On a lighter note, the engineer run pilot course ( always to be avoided if you have the choice as a pilot ) in 1989 at Woodford produced the following gem.
The powers that were, looked at the prototype after being removed from the hanger and decided that the prop tips "looked" to be too close to the ground.

Mmmh. Composite props. Mmmh. Difficult to change them. Best make the nose leg longer. Which was done before flight in the best Tiger Moth traditions.

First take off on gear retract ? The nose leg wouldn`t fit in the bay and jammed.

The cure ? put a bend in the nose leg for retraction.

Boeing and Airbus eat your hearts out.

So help me, absolutely true.

non iron, I don’t want to contradict you, but the extended leg was fitted for the US market, to enable the aircraft to be used on an airbridge, not to make the props further from the ground as you suggest.
The major problem with the ATP, was that little money was spent on development of the aircraft or tooling, which resulted in a lot of problems in the early days, from which it received its bad reputation – ATP Another technical problem or another thousand pounds

West Air have a few and seems to be happy!? Are they making money or will they in the near future swich to something main stream.
And by the way; Will they be needing any pilots soon???? Off topic, but I'm bored........:cool:

This seems to be a problem with most Bae aircraft , then they spend the next 10 years issuing service bulletins and airworthiness directives and then they finally complete the design process 10 years later :)

Yes but they will only be offering short term contracts to check and training captians for 6 to 12 months

10 local pilots have already done the training at Oxford in the UK

Masking tape.
You may well be right, an interesting angle certainly. No pun intended.
All l know is half my course was Air Wisconsin management ( the first US customer ) and airbridge access was never mentioned.
The ground instructor, who delivered that homily to us all, signed my pass certificate and presented my ATP tie.

On balance, well...., l really have to believe him.

No offence.

Any thoughts then on the type being grounded in`89 ?
Could it have been plastic trim problems ?

ATP
 

Mrs GGR got lots of hours, days, weeks in these as CC in the good old days and has offered ''Another take-off postponed''.

GGR

:) a new one for me.

Long Nose Leg
 

I was an instructor with BAe for the ATP and still am an instructor for the ATP. The long nose leg was fitted to give an air bridging capability, regardless of whether anyone actually used it in that way. Later aircraft had a shorter nose leg and the legs are interchangable.
The leg does not have any sort of kink or bend in it. There is a shortening mechanism regardless of which leg is fitted.
From what you were told I reckon I could take a real good guess at which instructor you had.

Thankyou Blue Coyote for trusting my word.

l appreciate it.