Five decades on from Britain’s first order for Boeing 747s, in the September 2016 issue of Aviation News Charles Kennedy looked back at the life and times of the British Airways jumbo fleet.
British Airways (BA) was formed following the 1972 merger of Britain’s two state-owned flag carriers – British European Airways (BEA) and British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC). BEA had mostly flown short- and medium-haul sectors utilising an entirely British-built fleet of Hawker Siddeley Tridents, BAC One-Elevens, Vickers Viscounts and Vanguards whereas BOAC had concentrated on intercontinental routes using a mixed fleet of British-built Vickers VC10s and American Boeing 707s.
By this time the aviation world had already fully committed to the ‘jet age’ for more than a decade. By the mid-1960s the British and French were investing huge sums in the joint development of the supersonic Concorde while the Americans were set on a theory of economies of scale and efficiency by developing three widebodied airliners.
In California McDonnell Douglas was working on its three-engined DC-10 and Lockheed was making great progress with the similar L-1011 TriStar. Meanwhile, up the west coast in Seattle, Boeing had recently lost the contract to …
