Heathrow in the mid eighties

What wonderful photos!

I was a regular passenger between LBA and Heathrow in that era (well 87 onwards) and the variety of airlines and aircraft was way more interesting than today IMHO.

I fondly remember being aboard the British Midland DC9’s on the BD420 waiting in the queue for take off seeing the lufthansa 727’s lining up ahead of us and then hearing the roar of their engines as they blasted down 27R and into the evening sky.

Please lets see some more scans.

Thanks for those, some really good stuff. I particularly like the one of the BA Tristar which looks as though it has just ingested a Queens Flight 748 (?) in the middle engine. The nice thing was the contrast and variety of airframes with major differences such as Concorde and the Tupolev.

Wow, amazing!

What a wonderful set of images! I have a huge soft spot for old scans so it’s really nice to see a decent size thread of them. Thanks for sharing. 🙂

Paul

Where did the BMA fly their Shorts 360 to? Seems odd to see that in Heathrow, knowing that the smallest commercial aircraft at Heathrow today is, perhaps, the Erj135! (Correct me if im wrong!)

I think the BMA S360 used to operate to East Midlands I think? There was also an Air Eccose SD360 that did Aberdeen at about 8am as the Air UK examples. Those photo take be back to my teenage years of getting the bus to LHR from Reading £2.20 return , 20p to get into the Queens Building, a cheap day out and loads of numbers in the book! I would guess the photos date from around 1984-85. I loved that Alia Tristar scheme, even if it didn’t last long.

Superb!!

Thanks for taking the time to scan and post!!
I was serving my time as a B.A avionics technician apprentice at LHR from 1980-1986 and was working out of pier6 (terminal3) for the last 2 years of my exile “down south” so most of these pics bring back great memories!!!

Cheers
Kev

A cracking set of pics, especially the Tu134s and JAT DC9. Brings back many happy memories of the T2 roof. Thanks very much for taking the time to post them 🙂

A nice bit of nostalgia..always enjoyable

Lovely Shot of A7-AAC ,worked on her at Lasham truly luxurious inside;)

Some superb images there, I never tire of seeing the 707 – my favourite all time airliner 🙂

Absolutely brilliant shots of the 80s! 😀

T4 was indeed still under construction in these pictures.

Luxair used to operate a connection to South Africa, they even had a SA B747SP in Luxair colors at one time.
Most of the passengers would be transferring in Findel.

I also have the feeling that the platforms and also the horizon in those days was much more uncluttered.
The cities are moving in on the airports (the same is happening here in Amsterdam).
Also there are more groundhandling firms these days that all bring their equipment and need warehouses, cluttering the space.

rgds
EC

Bmused55

I think the picture showing,as you so rightly say T4,shows it still fenced off and not opened.I don’t think “The Row” was that much less crowded even then as there were only 3 terminals and,of all airports.it probably reached near capacity years ago and expansion since has therefore been restricted.I’d hazard a guess that arrivals per hour isn’t that much different now.
Happy days….

Barry

WOW, I love these photos.

Notice how sparsly populated (by planes) the background is, in particular that Terminal with the orange jet bridges (T4?).

Today the same photos would picture every bit of available tarmac crammed with aircraft.

Luxair A300 is now an ERJ-145 how times have changed!,great thread.

..and Biman are still flying that DC-10! Some great memories there, thanks for posting 🙂

Thanks for the kind replies guys, I can’t help you much with your questions. I was only up on the queens building and carparks a couple of times.
On later journeys I was with my car and stayed near Hatton cross for landing and line-up shots. I couldn’t afford to park my car in the carparks of the terminal.

I do have more pictures also of Gatwick in those days, if the weather stays like this I’ll certainly should have some time to do the scans.

rgds
EC

Wonderful! Those were the days!

civilspotter. Thank you very much for those supurb scans ! what a good cross section of LHR traffic in there, as others have said, another batch at some time would be a bonus for us !

Thank You.

Keith.

And me too , I remmeber those days but I did not have the car ,bedded down in T2.
anybody remmeber the bar up the stairs in t2 that had green seats round it ,spent a good few nights in the bar and sleeping on the seats.