I know this is resurrecting an old thread, but hopefully somebody may be interested.

I was at the Museum of Berkshire Aviation an hour ago and thought you may like to see the Student as it is today. It’s quite a dull day here so apologies that the photos aren’t great, but they should give an idea of the progress made by the team at Woodley.

As Eddie so rightly points out, the later Lancastrians had 1+1 seating. The original Lancastrian III order for BSAA was for 18 aircraft. Ultimately only 6 of these aircraft were delivered, the remaining 12 being cancelled as a result of the merger with BOAC. The seating was arranged with 7 forward facing seats on the port side and 6 on the starboard (there is a photo of the interior of a BSAA Lancastrian III in “Fly With the Stars”). For the passengers it appeared to be a far more comfortable arrangement than the starboard facing seats of the Lancastrian I.
The Lancastrian II aircraft briefly operated by BSAA were ex-RAF and were only fitted with 9 seats.

Incidentally, following on from the original theme of this thread, there is a photo on my website of the BSAA Lancaster ‘Star Ward’ (G-AGUM) fitted with the rather ungainly Airtech freight pannier, see – http://www.flywiththestars.co.uk/Pictures/Aircraft/aircraft.htm
It only made one (hair-raising) flight, from Langley, before the idea and presumably the pannier were scrapped.

Thanks to the endorsements of Eddie and others on this forum, our history of BSAA seems to be proving popular. Due to a number of problems with the publisher, as well as being available to order via booksellers, the book, “Fly With the Stars” is now available direct from the authors, UK post free, via the website http://www.flywiththestars.co.uk . Please contact us through the webite if you require more information. There are more photos of BSAA aircraft on there, and a fleet listing giving details of some of the aircraft mentioned in this thread.

Thanks Keith. Yes, that’s a fine photo of Tudor IVB G-AGRF and one we used in “Fly with the Stars”. It’s quite rare to see photos of that particular aircraft with that combination of markings as I believe it was only painted like that for a few months, in early 1949.

I’m always keen to see photos of Tudors. It’s an aircraft I’d love to have seen ‘in the flesh’ in spite of the ungainly fin and rudder, but as you confirmed above, the last flight was in 1959, the year before I was born!
Kind regards,
Ian

Keith, Thanks so much for the kind words. Reading comments like that makes all the effort on the book and website feel worthwhile!
Best wishes,
Ian (BSAA1947)

Well yes, that’s true Baz, Langley was a grass field, but had two large “runways” marked out on the grass! Certainly large enough to be used by the BSAA (British South American Airways) Lancastrians, Yorks and Tudors.

I was interested to see the thread on the Flyer forum about Langley as they referred to the film on my website http://www.flywiththestars.co.uk and used the Langley airfield plan from there too. Strange thing is that none of the contributors to that thread contacted me to ask if I had any more information.

I don’t of course, but …… 🙂