Ex ATA L1011's going to the RAF
 

I heard that the MOD are buying the 3 ex ATA L1011's for the RAF

Anybody have more info?

;)

I didn't know the Air Transport Auxiliary had any L1011s !

Has been rumoured for ages, although not heard the ATA connection raised...

Good - just what the AT fleet needs:mad:

More ancient, non-standardised, knackered ex-airline Tristars:mad:

Some more pans taken up at Brize by the 216 static display sqn.

Hope they stay clear of N186AT as had 4 hyd failures in this one in 6 months all at the same place in the tail are forword of the stabiliser box we always suspected the airframe was twisted causing the pipe to chaff through.

According to Airfleets N186AT first flew on 12 April 1974 and was delivered to Delta as N706DA on 2 May 1974; it's been in store at Roswell since May 2003.

In between whiles it's been around a bit - Air Algerie, Air France, Air Afrique...

Scrapheap Challenge, indeed!

American Trans Air N186AT (Lockheed L-1011 TriStar) (Ex N706DA ) - Airfleets

Been saying for ages as a short stop till they can get FSTA up and running it would be a sensible option, been talked about several times over the recent months, as long as all Checks have been carried out (which think they have) then in theory they could come straight in to service.
Oviously would be restricted where there could fly in too unless they get em then lose em to MAE for 18 months but say it again! as a stop gap why not get em and use em as "hub and spoke".

Why not do what the rest of the world does and buy something NEW and modern......... there is a reason the worlds airlines retire these old dogs, they cost a fortune to maintain and in the long term a A330 etc would pay you back dividends over flying something you get in African states these days....... Typical British Government spending plans, buy cheap tired old dogs then spend a fortune maintaining them....... there is good reason Airlines get rid of the old aircraft in their fleets, and that is they would go bust keeping them flying...

Look at the VC10....... that was on it's swan song when I worked on them 15 years ago, these days it must come with it's own zimmer frame.......

It amased me when the UK Government donated XYZ millions to Pakistan to combat terrorism of late........ when you look at what they fly and can afford to maintain and then look at what the RAF is still operating, one often wonders if the money should not be coming the other way......

...Errr..sorry for butting in...I was just going to say what a great airplane the L1011 is, and has always been.
It's an airplane that was way ahead of its time.

My understanding of the main reason most larger airlines, at least, change their airplanes for later models is not because of higher maintenance costs, or even slightly higher running costs, but its because the airline wants the travelling public to see they're in a shiney new airframe, and the public like that to...not knowing anything else but what they can see, new seats and carpets.

This is not an issue here, and so they can go ahead and use good, reliable (generally) established types, that still have plenty of good hours, and an FE!
(can't overlook that!).

Cheers...FD...:ok:

And of course Air Engineers trying to keep a job?

Is this true? Would anyone seriously consider buying such ancient old clunkers in this day and age? No doubt Arfur Daley at Cambridge will be rubbing his hands together at the thought of the 'nice little earner' he would get for attempting to restore these shagged old heaps to working status....

How's the 'glass cockpit' coming along then, Arfur?

If true, it really would say it all about RAF priorities. Lots of jolly super whizzy TypHoons for the pointy heads to play about with - but modern AT aircraft? Forget it - kanckered old desert dogs will have to do....

[QUOTE=Flight Detent;4645212a great airplane the L1011 is, and has always been.
It's an airplane that was way ahead of its time.[/QUOTE]

And which time would that be?

I lunched with a guy that bought all the EA VC10s in 1974. Pleased as punch he was with the low price, absolute bargain.

The L1011, as a pure passenger jet in a civilian environment might just cut the mustard. In a military environment you need one or two little gucci mods, like a paint job, UHF radios, IFF, and probably a new set of seats, facing the other way, and without TV screens.

I am sure Brize would just love to operate yet another aircraft type that 'looks' like a T* but is different from all the other birds there.

Available? Maybe.

Cheap? You jest.

I take it you've never been on one of the RAF's current Tristars then?

None of the Tristars I flew in on my way to various hot and sandy places had the seats facing the other way.

Civil airlines use newer aircraft because the fuel bill is cheaper!

Tri-motors are almost irrelievent these days with ETOP approvals, arguably the death of Lockhead and Mcdonald Douglas who had bet on tri-motors being the future.

This move by the raf maybe a good one if they dont arse about with them. As long as they are RVSM equiped they can deliver troops to somewhere like muscat with C-17s taking them direct to theater.
If no Mods are requird a good short term buy!

P.S. Sounds far to sensible though!

At least the fighter department wouldn't do something as daft as this. There is no way that they would buy 15 cast-off 1960s jets from, say, the US Navy when the only common item would be the radome and then try to integrate them at minimum cost into the existing line up and find out that it just wouldn't pay. And then call it something weird like F-4J(UK) or F-4 Mk3. Just wouldn't happen.

Zoom, cynic.

Performance-wise the F-4J was pretty impressive compared to the Spey ones.

Support-wise though it was a pig to deploy, taking nearly one C-130 per F-4J if you needed to take the massive air starters etc. as well as the normal support kit.

Happy days!

Nobody is saying that this is an ideal buy! BUT as a stop gap until out lords and masters can come up with some cash to buy something newer then it makes sense! And they are cheap in comparison
We have an engineering set up for the TriStar (even if undermanned), we have a training sytem set up and we have crews to fly it (yep incuding the Air Eng)

Face facts we need seats on jets to get bums to and from the sandy place, FSTA ia years away, the govt cannot afford to go out and buy shiney new airbus at the mo, it would be a cheap, QUICK option to increase capacity of the A/T fleet

Many a god tune....
 

Zoom Nice one :D Wattisham is a poorer place without them.

Tristars: If intended as only a short term stop gap, pending acquisition of decent arframes ... Methinks they'd make sense.

However, I bet they will be sink holes for cash.
Although the bean counters must be weighing the cost against the charter bill whilst allowing for savings in crew training as we already have crew qualified .

Just have to accept that this is the way it will be for some time to come. UK PLC is bankrupt.

Howzabout we dig out the jigs for the Belfast and put it back into production with uber sexy new turbofan engines and carlos fandango cockpit.
To be produced in the combi guise. Quickly convertible trooping, freighter, tanker and sea surveillance roles.
I know a factory that could reverse engineer one if the jigs are gone.
I'll find that phone number. Anyone got a Shanghai directory? :cool:

The Wright Flyer was "ahead of its time" and if the ministry could find a way of hanging a couple of thousand pounders on it they would probably still be using them too!

An airline is in the industry to make money.... A lot of the budget airlines have a turn over of fleet every 5 years as once you get out of the 5 year warranty period you can start adding a lot of noughts to your maintainance bills, pure and simple... additionally as mentioned fuel burn is crucial in factoring this in, I realise the RAF is in a world of its own, they proved that when they rebuilt the Tristar that did an autoland at Brize many moons ago with the system not on and did the wing spars.......... no one in their right minds would have put it into a hanger for a year and throw money at it, but the RAF did, I do not even thing the Manufacurer could believe that one...

It's not rocket science to see that if airlines are dumping these things in the desert then they have had there time, the Governments of this Country on the other hand always have worked in quick cheap fixes that plaster over the real problems.
No Government is going to be popular by spending huge amounts of resources and increasing taxation to fund it when they can prop up a failing system with a few cheap off the shelf old dogs whilst looking to be doing something....... Take the landrover for example and the bodge it and scarper jobs they do on them for Iraq, this is plastering over the cracks cheaply to make it look like they are doing something when the best thing they could do with them is to replace them all with something that is up to the job in the first place..

Never going to happen as long as I have a hole in my butt, and there ain't much chance of that healing over....

Pontius Navigator,
The only difference between a C2 and a civvy T* is the SIFF & DIRCM and it's only had that for couple of years (and the stupid grey paint scheme and the fact that Civvies are allowed to use their autoland). Why would you need UHF on a passenger jet?

There is something else that hads probably been taken into account by those "in the know" but not by anyone here yet.

If the RAF buy nice shiny new Airbus 3xx, then teach everyone to use them, where do you think all those nice, newly trained people are going to go?

Pilots with a nice new Airbus A3xx rating are going straight to the airlines, and all those engineers with Airbus maintenance experience? They'll see them there too!!

Keeping out of date equipment ensures that the guys have some marketable experience, but you can't make it too easy, can you?:8


Or am I being toooo cynical? :ok:

No, the travelling public does not care or really understand. The difference in op costs is indeed that significant, that airlines are very keen to offload old aircraft and replace them with the new.

Now the sensible thing would have been to buy some off-market A330s to gain op experience on them. How silly of me for thinking that would be considered...!

Well they had that with the VC10 in the early days so made Pilots acting Sqn Ldrs to make the pay comparable so as to reduce the migration to the Civilian market...

Perhaps the Government is working on the premise of reducing the Armed forces manpower to fit the capability we have opposed to doing it the other way round...... Now I am being cynical.

"Now the sensible thing would have been to buy some off-market A330s to gain op experience on them. How silly of me for thinking that would be considered...!"

You would be very fortunate to get one!My airline has been looking for the last couple of years and still has not found any with the large doors at the three doors position.

If this is true, perhaps these old birds could be put to work on the South Atlantic, instead of the never-ending contracting-out?

One would imagine these a/c (it would actually only take 1 frame to run the pre-Globespan schedule) could be put to work on that route with no "mil" mods whatsoever?

Oh but I have. I had a forward facing window seat too. But that was a very long time ago before the aircraft did its PD to Lyneham - same skipper.

Seats was a cynical crack at the if it ain't broke we will improve it system.

As for UHF radios, I don't know if they were fitted to the C2 but they could just come in handy in a military environment?

All of the cynicism here reminds me of that 'Ministry of Dements' faux memo that was posted on here last year. Made me giggle.

Keep it up!

A lot of excellent comments by people with no money:ugh:

Of course a nice shiny new Multi role something or other would be much better.
The problem is that it takes time and money neither of which seem readily available.

At around $1m each the L1011 is hardly capital expenditure.
To put them into sevice as people have said just to ferry troops up and down would be minimal cost.

Then they can save the pennies for the next generation craft:p

Yes the major airlines have to change equipment to keep up with the Jones's
But if you cannot get cheap finance you have to burn a lot of fuel to go from an L1011 lease at $80,000 and month to a fuel efficient Boeing lease at $700.00

BTW could someone remind me what the Mighty USAF are doing for their current tanker aircraft:ok:

A better buy would be some 747-400s: there are enough available on the used market and they run to around $40 mill for a mid life example.

The 1011, as good an airplane as it is, doesn't make economic sense as the price of fuel rises: they are also maintenance intensive and the 400 can carry 25% more pax for not much more fuel. The problem you have is that the people who are in Procurement don't know the first thing about commercial aviation and airplane performance.

I'm fairly sure BA are getting shot of a couple of 744s.....

As superb as the TriMotor was, I'm sure there are stacks of newer cheaper-to-run, higher-spares-availability twin jets around too going for a song.

The RAF is spoilt for choice.

Government of this Country on the other hand can't afford to buy shiny new transport aircraft. The kitty is empty, the cupboard bare, but three or four mid-life 744's should be affordable.

Any costs would be blown sky high by the government's inevitible engagement of a consultancy company to 'scope' the viability of other aircraft in a 2 year study, or something equally as inept.

You get what I mean.

If the RAF are committed to keeping their existing L1011's until 2015 it makes logical sense to add & integrate a few 'cheap" L1011's to give them redundancy. They know the airplane and it seems to be doing the job for them.

If you can buy these (L1011's) which are recently flying aircraft at $1.5M how can you possibly compare these to B747's which they have no experience of operating and are not going to be priced in this dollar range?

By the way, these very same ATA aircraft were making regular runs ferrying troops in & out of Iraq & Afghanistan with very few hiccups. A lot more reliable than the DC10's

The point that was made above was that cheap is an illusory 5-letter word. The VC10s that were bought in were cheap to buy but not cheap to bring in to service.

It is true the T* might be a diferent kettle of fish but these ones are a lot older, I presume, than the others when we bought them. How well were they treated when put in to storage?

Yep! Two parked up so far and at least one other to follow! Do a swop for the trimotors?:}

All the ATA L-10s are ex-somebody else. The RAF rumor concerns ATA's ex-RJ (Royal Jordanian) -500s. At least that makes them the same as the 9 the RAF already has. ATA used the -500s on Round the World cruises, so they must have been reasonably reliable. Also, the FAA took a very close look at them before they went to ATA. S/N 1217 needs closer scrutiny than the other 4 RJ -500s and could be a touch tail heavy.

Ok, looks like a great opportunity for an ex-FE!

Where do I sign up? AFCO's don't even know what an FE or Air Eng is?

Yes, like a look I've tried to rejoin the RAF!

this is criminal if true. Who is the largest buyer of airliners in the world? AA? BA? Cathay? Nope, its ILFC. Who they? ILFC lease aircraft out to airlines around the globe so they don't have to buy them themselves. Now there's a crazy idea.

OK, for special mods like DIRCM I can understand why we need our own (and do we need DIRCM for the trips they do? really?), but is it only a matter of time before one of these knackered old birds with the best efforts of the engineers (and they have my total sympathy and admiration) fatigues out of the sky with a battalion of chaps returning from places sandy? I hope and pray it never happens, but until it does, then the criminals who allow this situation to continue will continue to get away with it. It's a f**cking disgrace.

The ATA L1011-500 not quite identical as they sport a couple of extra doors!!! I would imagine that one aircraft would be used as donor parts for the others & the existing RAF L1011 fleet.