There are good and bad points about either arrangement and have assumed low wing aircraft rather than high wing (such as Bae 146)

wing mounted engines good points include :

easy access for maintenance & replacement
close proximity to fuel tanks so less ‘plumbing’

wing mounted engines bad points :

easy to injest stones / objects etc
higher risk of ground strikes
higher risk on damage by ramp vehicles
assymetric thrust problems if 1 fails
larger u/c needed for ground clearance so adding weight to the overall structure

Tail mounted engines good points

little assymetric effect if 1 fails
allows for a aerodynamically clean wing
less prone to fod damage
ground clearance does not need to be as high so smaller / less heavy u/c can be used.

Tail mounted engines bad points

complex ‘plumbing’ arrangements for fuel etc
deep stall risk
access difficult
concentration of weight at one end of the fuselage (CoG issues)
uncontained failure more likely to damage structure / other engine
(VC10 / Il62)

One of my favourite pictures

http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=32572

(apologies for linking rather than showing)

G-SJCH stand for Sir John Charles Hoddinott – a former Chief Constable of Hampshire

I was in a line of traffic on a busy road, third car back from the lead car, lead car slows suddenly for some reason (will become obvious) 2nd car is not happy and overtakes lead car, only to hit the pheasant the lead car had slowed down for – opps big feather cloud and 1 dead bird in a hedge.

btw – you are not allowed to pick up a pheasant that you have run over but the person behind you can – strange but true

Jeanske,

not sure if you are correct regarding the Japanese 747-400D.
I have flown on one in Japan (JA8957 no winglets) but have seen it at Heathrow with winglets etc. I thought that to prevent the airframes getting to high (in terms of cycles) rather than hours flown some/all would be ‘converted’ to normal 400’s and put on long haul routes with some of the standard 400s being put on domestic routes. JAL or ANA could find a situation with several aircraft of the same age but some having a far greater number of cycles but fewer hours than others and it makes sense to correct any imbalance.

aircraft & airline combo’s that will be long remembered include

Concorde / BA
Comet / Dan Air
Hp Herald / Air UK
VC10 / British United
Viscount / BEA
Bac 1-11 / BA/ Dan Air/ Laker / BCal

The above airlines were operators of the types but the common factor is that they were of British design and manufacture apart from Concorde where the french provided the garlic for the meals 😉

It is a sad indication of the state of british industry when you think of what we could produce 40 years ago and compare it to what we produce now.

Concorde – probably the most graceful aircraft on the planet
Comet – first jet airliner, had all the problems of being ‘a first’ but the solutions to which have benefited aviation ever since
Herald / Viscount – first turboprop airliners (i think)
VC10 – another great design from Vickers, looked good and flew even better according to those who did. Popular with passengers but as it was designed for ‘hot & high’ destinations was not the most economical.
Bac1-11 – possibly the one aircraft certainly in the UK that helped the package holiday market literally take off.

Boscombe Down is the airfield that MOD Bac111 is based at.

Dee Howard had a Bac111 with a Tay engine on one side which appeared at Farnborough show mid 80’s.

The museum at Brooklands has a development aircraft that has undergone several modifications during its lifetime. It was the original 400 series (i think) was stretched to become a 500, then reduced to become the 475 but kept the 500 series wings. (but still has a 200 series wing box)
It also did a couple of sales tours (as a 475) to south/central america and Japan – having seen a video of some of the airports flown into it must have an exciting time.
Have also seen a video of its arrival at Brooklands – very impressing short field landing (runway length under 500m) made possible by a small aerodynamic fillet on the wing that reduced the landing speed by up to 20 knots.

You mean shop (singular) – airside is nothing special and what there is will cost an arm & a leg