Last Chance 748

Happy birthday 748! As for G-ARAY her cockpit was last reported with an airliner salvage company a number of years ago.

I don’t know whether the fuselage of G-ARAY still exists. It lay around Lasham for a while after it was dismantled and I have a memory that it went somewhere for no destructive training, maybe with a Fire Brigade?

Happy Birthday Avro 748!

Surprised this hasn’t been mentioned, but the 748 first flew 50 years ago today when G-APZV was flown at Woodford by ‘Jimmy’ Harrison on a then record breaking first test flight for an airliner of 2 hrs 41 minutes.

Looks decidedly like Andover C1 XS604

There are a few ex-Australian examples stored at Southend along with a couple of ex-Jaynes one’s. The ex Doncaster example was scrapped there fairly recently.

Last Thailand and Brazil have preserved examples IIRC, India will no doubt preserve one as well.

The 50 odd or so ATP’s have got plenty of years left in them yet so no need to be concerned about it anyway.

Last chance saloon for the 748/Andover.

Speaking of which, here’s another ‘survivor’.

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=50872

Plenty of room, gotta love that old art deco terminal and tower, safe from any developers I hope!
BTW never heard ‘Budgie’ before, where does that come from?

‘Budgie’ – cos they were going cheap!

British Airways regional use in Scotland.

Plenty of room, gotta love that old art deco terminal and tower, safe from any developers I hope!
BTW never heard ‘Budgie’ before, where does that come from?

Not sure we could get a budgie in at Speke as we are struggling for space :p:D

Jon

(Thread Creep: Nimrod AEW3)

Fb #3/8, DB #6. This project became highly political.
31/3/77: Labour Govt. took 11 MR1 part-built airframes intended for East of Suez, and funded their incarnation as 3 Trials/8 delivered AEW. On 29/4/77 newly nationalised BAe started trading: they (Woodford) were to do the platform, GEC were to do the clever boxes; not clear who was to integrate.
Drift.
Mrs.Thatcher floated 51.57% of BAe, 13/2/81, balance 5/85. GEC had tried to persuade her to make it a Trade sale (to them). Mutual disdain, BAe:GEC, here and elsewhere.
1/86 Defence Minister Heseltine resigned (“the Westland Affair”), shaking Mrs.Thatcher’s Administration and embarking on his vendetta that contributed to her 1990 ejection.
18/12/86 she cancelled Nimrod AEW (in 1987, jointly with France, buying E-3D). In her Memoirs she has this as (in the sense) “a unique example of how not to manage a major project”: i.e Fule Heseltine. A Parliamentary Accounts Committee post mortem on the £882Mn. cost has poor co-ordination, BAe:GEC, and inadequate processing power.

On Thread: ATP is best forgotten; 748, third most widely-sold British turbine transport [Viscount, Jetstream] is more worthy of preservation than Herald.

One of the previous partial threads on this topic http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=78140&highlight=Blackpool

The appears to be just one Andover preserved in the U.K -the example at Cosford.

Looking at the U.K production figures of over 300 ! It’s amazing the lack of any cohesive plan to save one here.

IIRC in 2008 NAM was notified about two airframes.

Prior to that I believe NAM held talks about various airframes from Woodford, where the Ashton fuselage came from.

Agree about the ATP, which not for nothing was it known as “Another Technical Problem” but rather that DAS are stretched on the resource front.

The ATP, just dosen’t have the interest that a 748 has, and that is probably fairly marginal, hence very little being done about preserving a whole one.
Also to the public it is very similar, and perhaps not as interesting, as a military 748/Andover, of which some (how many now?) are about.

I believe that DAS, the Duxford one, were offered an ATP, the GTI version of the 748, but declined due to lack of facilities, manpower and money to maintain it.

Ah OK:cool:

Just DAS and pics of Dan Air Services who used to preserve an example of their aircraft confused me

I think that the DAS being referred to is the Duxford Aviation Society.

IIRC it was they who forwarded on details of the Blackpool airframes in autumn 2008, sadly my subsequent communications in the north-west came to nothing!

As has been posted previously on the topic, hopefully NAM now has other larger acquisitions to contemplate.

How can DAS have the means to preserve one when they went bust in 1992 and were sold to BA for £1 in 1992???

G-ARAY was scrapped

The first protoype was G-APZV and that was converted into the prototype HS.780 Andover as G-ARMV and eventually became a part ATP mock up as the ATP used the basic wing of the Andover rather that the 748 wing

Related to me from an Ex RAF WO who was on the project – certainly there was a problem with computer cooling.

As for the cost of bringing a 748 back -certainly anything can arrive on a lorry -however an aircraft is nine times out of ten usually more intact in terms of systems if it can fly in . I think possibly the will to get something flying from Southend for example is greater than Africa!