Had a colleague who used the fly the shed for British Midland and he recounted a tale of flying from Heathrow to Brum one winters evening and starting out flight planned at something like FL80 but being down at 60 by WCO and dropping out of controlled airspace with the speed slowly decaying sometime later. Made it to BHX but he wasn't impressed to say the least. He called them flying ice cubes.

This video gives an idea. ( albeit from across the pond) of how icing built up on the 360

Yikes!

Considering their use in northern climes in the USA, and in night cargo work, I'm amazed that there weren't more losses through icing.

The Aer Lingus one at Castle Don. is notable. The Loganair incident at Edinburgh, was down to engine ice ingestion, so I read in the AAIB report.

I seem to recall reading a "I Learnt About Flying From That"-type article about a 360 having similar problems, which prompted the question.

Was this characteristic documented, or was it a case of learning on the job (quickly and memorably...)?

Or a Photoshop job, no way could it have been real.

The Aer Lingus happened late on a Friday night, too late for the next day's papers. The front page of the Sundays carried aerial pictures of the crash, and we gave them out to pax as they boarded for the flight I discussed a couple of posts above. You can imagine the atmosphere in the cabin; the windows iced up, and there was the racket as ice was thrown off the props.

My first job was on these with Loganair.
Of course, I thought it was great!
General handling got better and better as there was no autopilot. Normally flew the downwind leg flat out, then did a 180 degree descending turn, while configuring to land. Roll the wing up and flare. None of this stabilised approach malarkey!
Other memories were of the leaky hatch above the FOs seat, usually stuffed with J Cloths.... But still leaking.
Yes, it carried ice, but not well. Felt like a couple of tons....
Used to do base checks on the aircraft- there was no sim- damn thing barely climbed on one engine, and that was empty! I always thought that with a real engine failure on a heavy one, we'd only be going in one direction, and it wasn't up.
Another story was about the one taxiing out at Glasgow. The Air Canada behind asked the tower what type it was, and tower said 'it's a shed'. Loganair captain immediately replied, 'it's a Shorts SD-360 actually'.
To which the AC crew responded 'really. Did you make it yourself?':)

Anyway, was fun to fly and passengers really liked it. They did not regard the move to the Jetstream 41 as any improvement.
Another time, we'd eased up to 14,000' for some reason, when our sole hostie asked if we were flying higher than usual? Yes, we said, but how can you tell?
Oh, a passenger has just had the glass jump off his watch.

Great times, great folk to fly with and an aircraft that flew better than it looked. Mind you, it looked grim.

Another time, a pax wrote in to comment on his flight. He wrote that he'd boarded the bus to go out to the aircraft, and was surprised when the bus took off!

Was quite exciting for a first job. Didn't realise how good it was really.

What super memories! Thanks for sharing these.

>I always thought that with a real engine failure on a heavy one, we'd only be going in one direction, and it wasn't up.

This happened on a Genair 100-series 330 out of Teesside for Glasgow, so I heard around the airport (I worked on the ground there in 1984).

They lost an engine and declared "Pan" due to " 'dem Laws of Physics" affecting their ability to stay level with 30 pax. I'm amazed that the shed was ever given a C of A, considering such poor single engine performance.

I seem to recall that later versions were better. Maybe they gave you a better choice of open fields or long beaches...

Had some great rides in shorts 330 one from Miami to Nassau with American international with the seat cushion as your life raft and a titian shorts from stanstead to liege on a sports charter great flying low over the channel then in a low approach to liege remined of the film tonight's target is Berlin

Air Cargo Carriers are the largest operator in the world with around 30 in service. They fly mainly for UPS out of Louisville to various weird and wonderful points across the Midwest and South-East US.

I was lucky enough to fly the full-motion simulator (the only one in the world I think) at La Guardia back in 2007.

My company at the time built them a fixed base device which is still in operation at their Milwaukee base. Here is a video of it in operation:


http://youtu.be/5aPZgAA0Cdc

A Metropolitan Airways SD330 in the 1980s flying from Birmingham to Cardiff had an engine failure. London ATC filed an MOR due to the aircraft being unable to maintain FL60. The reason was that the crew were slow to go to Max Continuous Power on the good engine. There was a very good reason for the delay in increasing the power, but I couldn't say why on this forum!

My first day line training on the Shed. GLA-Islay-GLA. Me and Ray Mitchell.

Took off rwy 23 and into the clag at 200'.

Flew to Islay to do the NDB/ DME letdown with rain flowing UP the windscreen and landing on my head. Tried fiddling with the J cloths, but nothing seemed to work. Never saw the ground after taking off, and don't forget the Shed had only 'green screen' nav. No GPS or IRS. Just needles, VOR and beam bar.

Done the approach and saw nothing. Went around.

Done it again. Nothing. Around again.

Training Capt. did the next one. Another go around, a wee bit after the MAP.....
I did the GA. Getting ok at these by now.

Chucked it, and took the pax back to Glasgow.

Done the ILS to minimums and landed off it. All we'd seen of the ground, the whole flight, was a glimpse of the beach near Port Ellen....

Went home with knees trembling....:)

Another time, flew with Moody Ken on a GLA- BEB- SYY early morning freight flight. 4.5 tonnes of newspapers for the He-Brides.
Stitch shaker activated continuously as we descended into BEB in ice and IMC. Nothing would stop it, and it's a bad feeling when you are holding the controls- a bit like flying a pneumatic road drill that won't turn off. Capt pulled the CB in the end, thank God.
Did the VOR at Benny and saw SFA.
Diverted to SYY, and shot the VOR to 36. Nothing.
Went around and shot the bloody NDB or VOR, I can't remember, to 18.
FA again.
Diverted to, and landed at INV.
I was getting used to it by this time.

Another one was rocking up to Scumburgh on time, and doing that cloud break procedure, put the gear down but only got two greens.
We decided ( when I say 'we'- my input was not great) to go to Wick. Tried everything, but no joy.
The aircraft had been landing at Barra, and the gear was suffering from the salty water.
Finished up as an emergency landing with the full 'brace brace' thing to the pax, but happily the Captain, Paul Wells, jolted the right gear down when he landed on the left one.
No drama. :ok:

I seem to remember that turning on the A.C. in the 330 caused us to slow by 15-20kts. Once looked out and saw the engine intake glowing red, the anti ice mat had gone into thermal runaway.

I never saw any really serious things go wrong with it, I do seem to remember some of the characters flying it were a far greater hazard than the aeroplane ever was!

Happy days and great to have flown it

I flew as a passenger on a 360 many years ago out of Norwich - it was a special charter taking a group of enthusiasts down to RIAT Fairford. I remember it being b***dy hot, and the poor old shed sounded like it was at full power most of the way. On the return leg I managed to get the jump seat next to (and behind) the captain. We used an awful lot of Fairford's runway getting airborne. I'm fairly sure the aircon was turned off before the take off roll, and not put back on until we had reached some altitude. I was given a headset but the mic wasn't plugged in. It made for an interesting day out - we passed over Enstone and I remember looking down at the sorry remains of the Bristol Frightener which had ground looped only a few days earlier.

7cyl.
Hi Paul! Long time no fly!

Yes, I didn't remember the wind, but then 45G50 wasn't really unusual up there was it???
I remember skating sideways along the runway at Islay on another dreadful day with crosswinds that were clearly high enough to re-establish the Sheds Xwind limits somewhat further up the Beaufort scale.

Happy days, and yes, have to agree with the poster who commented on the diversity of the characters who worked there. Hey, someone had to do it!

I remember one very stony silence after I mentioned to my Captain, that I'd once been a social worker.....best leave it that eh?:uhoh:

Drop me a pm if u like... Cheery, S.

So they considered a well-used Nord 262 switched to engines for which parts were actually available to be an upgrade over the Shorts?
Go figure.
The Shorts were in commuter service under contract to at least one of the majors here in the US for a time.
I'm sorry that I missed flying on one.

C-23B+
 

The SD-360 conversion to C-23B+'s was a politically driven Pork Barrel project, utilizing high time & high cycle airframes converted to twin tailed ramp equipped Sherpas.

They continue to fly. Now "given" to the US Forest Service to replace more capable airplanes like the Turbine DC-3 and DHC-6.

This event has been written about on a fire related aviation site.

It is also replacing the C-23A Sherpa that the USFS got from the USAF back in the fall of 1991. Neither airplane has good performance in high altitude and hot temperature situations which includes most of the area of operation of the USFS. Interestingly the A models currently have fewer hours and cycles than the B+'s.

I agree with the previous post that the airplane carries a lot of ice but not very good. In my case it was a C-23A.

A key factor in the fairly rapid decline in operational 330 numbers was (as is often the case with older aircraft) maintenance costs.
Most 330s were operated on either G- or N- registrations and were on the individual operators' approved maintenance schedules which included on-condition maintenance of the PT6-45R engines. This meant that by the time disposal was considered the engines' time since overhaul were way in excess of the manufacturer's schedule. Potential new operators in other countries therefore faced expensive overhauls before the aircraft could have operated. These airframes were not worth the cost of those overhauls which is why so many were parted out or simply scrapped. Shorts had provided residual value guarantees on the majority of airframes to get them financed in the first place. For the reasons above those values were too optimistic, so the British taxpayer ended up owning them towards the end of their useful life.

Disappointingly BenAir didn't win the Royal Mail Christmas tender from Belfast to Edinburgh this year, so instead of a Shed in Belfast we have a Bin Air Texan-Tube.

A 330 passed-through Ronaldsway back in October heading to the UAE as a jump-ship. It was sold from the Air Cargo fleet and is to be joined by a second one in early 2016; here's hoping it will call-in to Belfast en route rather than pottering over its birthplace at 6,0000 ft :(

Did you say 60,000 feet? ;)

Reminds me of the one where a disbelieving F-86 Sabre jock pulled alongside a DC3 flying at something like FL300.
He was so busy rubbing his eyes and scratching his head - that when he got a wave from the cockpit window, he stalled it and disappeared from view.
Turned out that it was one of the first Turbo-DC3s under test.

A shed takes a lifetime to reach 6,000 ft, let alone 60,000!!

Ooops!

Perhaps the result of a secret Shorts project to cross-breed the SD3-30 with the SC.9...

Well I didn't find anything quite that exciting but here's a thread about the proposed Shorts 450, a 49-seat stretch:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/foru...html#msg227820

I remember the R/T exchange that went between a BA Shuttle B757 & a Loganair SH36...

Shuttle in response to Glasgow ATC: 'Roger, copied, number 2 to the Shed'
Loganair retorted: 'I'd rather be a shed than a tube!' :D

Shed in a bad storm holding at Bovingdon: "How much longer will we be here because it's wall-to-wall sick in the back".

The 360 pedigree went back to the SC7 Skyvan, as everyone knows, but fewer know that the first step after the Skyvan was the Skyliner; exactly the same airframe and engine (TPE331) as a Skyvan, but the large upwards rear door was replaced by a door in the side, and it was intended for 19 passengers only. We had one in the Gulf, in the '70s, but I don't know if there were any others, or indeed what happened to ours.

I think the 330 was the next step, followed by the 360.

Something else that people don't know is that the Skyvan could outperform a Twin Otter on STOL any day of the week, payload for payload, with the greatest of ease. And that's at the military MTOW 13,500 lbs that the aircraft was designed for, as operated by SOAF, as I recall, among others. Civil regs allowed only 12,500 lbs. Leaving Saiq, 6,500 ft elev., in a SOAF Skyvan, with a good load, was always exciting.

Thanks! Hmmmm...........Viscount alongside?

I well remember a 360 flight to Guernesesy in or about 1986, it may have been AirUk and was from the old Stansted terminal. Weather was also nearly terminal but certainly marginal, wet and very windy. Our lady F/O took us up like a rocket and I remember the sewing-machine-like screech from the engines. Buffeting continued as we dodged through very black clouds. Right over central London with amazing views through deep shafts of clear air and sun light. Then the lightning flashed and we buzzed off like a bumble-bee. At Guernesey there was gusting wind and we were tossed around like a leaf in the autumn but they got us down in one piece. I got the impression that the 360 was one tough little babe and will never forget that flight experience.

http://www.pprune.org/<a href=http:/..._July_1996.jpg If anyone is interested I've found a picture of our group after returning to Norwich from Fairford, as I described in an earlier comment. The Registration is G-OJSY which according to G-INFO was being operated by BAC Express Airlines at the time we flew on her (July 20th 1996). In 2000 it was transferred to Nigeria


http://s18.postimg.org/u93b0cj5l/Sho..._July_1996.jpg

First flew the SC7 Skyvan in 1972, it too was sometimes known as 'The Shed', also known as 'The Whispering Nissen Hut' and 'Melody in Metal'!

BA didn't fly the Skyliner for very long out of Glasgow, something to do with performance I believe, they managed to make the end of the GLA runway an obstacle! ;)

I don't know about the performance (well I do, though that's another story), but the Skyliner was incredibly unpopular with passengers, with its two very noisy Garretts. Many regular flyers on the GLA routes used to carry their own earplugs, in fact I have a feeling that towards the end of its brief career with BA, passengers were issued with them as a matter of course.

Van /330/360
 

The skyliner was so unpopular with the pax was, it is alleged, because it made you want to wee. Not sure if that is true, never had a problem myself.

Many fond memories of the 360 30 years ago, cut my airline teeth on it for Atlantic Southeast Airlines the "Skypig" was a reliable aircraft, all manual flying, flying skills were never better than back then flying between 5-7 hours a duty day.

Atlanta tower would always inform the aircraft in position ready to go, that " A pair of Shorts are crossing downfield"

The only fun fact I remember was if the airplane got overfuelled the vent was directly over the fuelllers head and would inform him/her of such a situation.

According to my logbook, over a period of four and a half years in the eighties I have 887 take-off's in a Skyvan and 27 landings. Fond memories of a real workhorse.

Incidentally I think the last Astazou-engined Skyvan went to the scrappy back in the 1990s, it was owned by a University in the USA ( Wisconsin? perhaps ) as an instructional airframe.

All the others had already been scrapped or converted to Garretts. Why did they go with those instead of PT6A I wonder?

Pity the UAS haven't shown much interest in preserving the type.

Mr Oleo Strut
Yes Would definitely have been Air UK you flew with, they operated STN-GCI until their demise in 1998.Shorts 360 flights from Stansted were very short lived, about 1 year I think 1986-87, most flights were on the F27 Before that and then a mix of F27 and BAE 146,possibly F100 towards the end[weekends] from 1988 onwards.
They also downgraded the SOU route from F27 to SH6 at that time too.
Not sure what the reason was but it was very short lived and was back to the F27 within a year or so. You definitely got some bumpy landings into Guernsey when it was windy on the Shorts!