WH. Re Viscount to LHR about 1962. It was a Viscount, possibly used as a stand in from Channel. I was familiar with the HS748 which I did use a few times. Once, coming from London, I was excited to use the 748 into LBA. It was extremely windy and the aircraft was all over the place, then almost on touch down landing aborted and off we went to Manchester. My parents, who lived in Guiseley were at LBA went home and awaited my arrival 2 hours later from Manchester. Gutted!
 
WH. Re Viscount to LHR about 1962. It was a Viscount, possibly used as a stand in from Channel. I was familiar with the HS748 which I did use a few times. Once, coming from London, I was excited to use the 748 into LBA. It was extremely windy and the aircraft was all over the place, then almost on touch down landing aborted and off we went to Manchester. My parents, who lived in Guiseley were at LBA went home and awaited my arrival 2 hours later from Manchester. Gutted!
Yes I don't doubt you flew on a Viscount but suspect it was a lease to cover an aircraft shortage. BKS started to get their first Viscounts in 1961 and the 748 in 1962. As I recall, they only standardised on the Viscount at LBA when the runway 15/33 opened in 1965. Prior to that it was just the odd one, mainly 700s which were smaller. One if those, G-ATTA was broken up in the apron to the East of the old black hangar in the early 1970s
 
One if those, G-ATTA was broken up in the apron to the East of the old black hangar in the early 1970s

BEA's Viscount 802's G-AOHH and G-AOHK were also scrapped in this area around 1976. I have a vivid memory of standing on my bike saddle to peep over the top of the wooden fence along WhiteHouse Lane where that hanger apron was and seeing one of those BEA examples sitting on it's belly in the initial stages of being broken up - I specifically remember seeing the tops of the red painted wings of the BEA livery of that time (they obviously hadn't been painted into the new B.A. sceme).
 
Yes they used the 727 200s on routes to the Mediterranean for Intasun. And once a 100 turned up in the Jersey route.
It was Ibiza we operated from Leeds with the 727-200 I operated the flight several times and on the inbound had to pass my house in a mini-bus with the rest of the crew and be taken to Manchester Airport where I picked up my car and drove straight back to my home in Yeadon.
 
Last edited:
Yes I don't doubt you flew on a Viscount but suspect it was a lease to cover an aircraft shortage. BKS started to get their first Viscounts in 1961 and the 748 in 1962. As I recall, they only standardised on the Viscount at LBA when the runway 15/33 opened in 1965. Prior to that it was just the odd one, mainly 700s which were smaller. One if those, G-ATTA was broken up in the apron to the East of the old black hangar in the early 1970s
We still have three ex BKS engineering members of our second Tuesday meal club who would know the situation at that time so I will ask them when we get the meetings going again.
Just a bit before my days of working at Lba although I was a pretty regular spotter and due to my amateur football career plus heading the ball too often my memory will not stretch to those days.
I am sure WH has it correct the girls never forget anything do they.
 
Just some info on G-ATTA It was a Viscount 745D Ex United Airlines Joined B K S in April 66 and was withdrawn from service in Jan 70.
G-APNF G-AVED G-AVIY all joined in 67. They were all withdrawn in 1970. They were all models built for the American market.
 
Question:

Does anybody remember if the old 737-200s with hush-kits were chapter 3 noise compliant for night ops from LBA?
 
I was actually working in Blackpool tower on the day that G-FH had its mishap. If I remember rightly the wind picked up from calm to around a 20 knot crosswind out of nowhere. My colleague in the tower had literally bought a brand new, top of the range Rover which was parked up in the ATC car park behind the tower.

I remember clearing FH to land and expressing my concern about the crosswind. The aircraft made a perfect landing prior to veering off the runway onto the grass, applying full power and trying to get airborne again. Unfortunately it was pointing straight at the tower, the crosswind was now a tail wind and it rose to about 50 feet prior to stalling.

Being a company man, I threw my headset down and did a runner onto the balcony, my colleague for reasons only known to him threw himself down the tower stairs into its flight path! Luckily the wing dip from the stall meant that it missed the tower by a few feet before planting itself nose down into the roof of my mates Rover.

As my mate emerged back up into the tower, I remember him saying that we had a lucky escape before I tapped him on the shoulder and told him to look into the car park. I'd never seen a grown man cry before :)

There were a few funny side stories which we can all laugh about now as nobody was amazingly badly injured. It was a weekend with no management on duty so the technicians had taken their Commordore 64 computer into work and were in the middle of a WW2 dogfight. As my mates Spitfire got shot down the Cessna dived past their window around 6 feet away before they heard the crunch. My mate turned to the other guy before commenting about how realistic these modern games were :)

The following day my colleague got a call from a director on the Channel 4 Big Breakfast show to go down to London and have an interview with Paula Yates on the famous bed. As he was still sulking he declined, I did offer my services but they weren't interested as it wasn't my car!

I got my claim to fame when an article appeared on page 3 in the sun with the headline "controller Lands plane onto his mates new car" obviously the only time that I've ever got near to getting considered for page 3.

Happy days at a crazy airport!
Thank god it wasn’t the tower!! Thanks so much for confirming what happened exactly, let’s say my dad always did love telling a good story and his memory is all over the place so I had wondered what the real event was behind the “flew it into blackpool tower story”
 

Upload Media

Remove Advertisements

Subscribe to help support your favourite forum and in return we'll remove all our advertisements. Your contribution will help to pay for things like site maintenance, domain name renewals and annual server charges.



Forums4aiports
Subscribe

NEW - Profile Posts

If anyone would like to share their local airport news right here in our news area let me know so I can give you the correct permissions to do so. It only takes a couple of minutes to upload a news story with an accompanying image. The news items can then be shared on the site homepage by you. #TakePart #Forums4airports Bring the news to one place!
survived a redundancy scenario where I work for the 3rd time. Now it looks likely I will get to cover work for 2 other teams.. Pretty please for a payrise? That would be a no and so stay on the min wage.
Live in Market Bosworth and take each day as it comes......
Well it looks like I'm off to Australia and New Zealand next year! Booked with BA from Manchester via Heathrow with a stop in Singapore and returning with Air New Zealand and BA via LAX to Heathrow. Will circumnavigate the globe and be my first trans-Pacific flight. First long haul flight with BA as well and of course Air NZ.
15 years at the same company was reached the weekend before last. Not sure how they will mark the occasion apart from the compulsory payirse to minimum wage (1st rise for 2 years; i was 15% above it back then!)
Ashley.S. wrote on Sotonsean's profile.
Welcome to the forum, I was born and bred in Southampton.

Trending Hashtags

Advertisement

Back
Top Bottom
  AdBlock Detected
Sure, ad-blocking software does a great job at blocking ads, but it also blocks some useful and important features of our website. For the best possible site experience please take a moment to disable your AdBlocker.