Bleached by the Scottish sunshine, One-Eleven G-AVMO was part of the British Airways collection at Cosford. It was 'saved' by the National Museum of Flight Scotland after the collection was disbanded, and can now be found at East Fortune (01Oct22).
The One-Eleven was conceived by Hunting Aircraft as a short-haul passenger airliner to replace the Vickers Viscount, with the designation Hunting 107. In 1960, and before development work had begun, Hunting merged with English Electric, Vickers and Bristol Aircraft to become the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) before, leading to the adoption of the One-Eleven name. Early sales were brisk, but competition from the Douglas DC-9, Boeing 737 and latterly the Fokker F28 Fellowship (as well as the protectionist policies of the United States Department of Transportation) kept down market penetration, and, by the early 1970s, sales had almost completed dried up. BAC persevered and in 1979 signed a deal transferring One-Eleven production to Romania. Unfortunately, this venture proved to be a dismal failure, with Romanian production ending in 1989 with only 9 of the hoped-for 80 built. The One-Eleven, known affectionately as the ‘pocket rocket,’ enjoyed something of a renaissance in the late 1980s, when large numbers began to find their way to Africa, and commercial operations continued in Libya and the Democratic Republic of Congo until the mid-2000s. Airbus Industrie, as the successor to BAC, eventually surrendered the One-Eleven’s European Air Safety Agency type certificate on 12 February 2010, so drawing airline operations of the type to a close. The final pair of operational One-Elevens, in use by Northrop Grumman as airborne systems test platforms, continued to operate under experimental certificates of airworthiness until 2019 when were retired and broken up. Survivor numbers have halved since 2017.
First flight: 20 Aug 63 (c/n 004, G-ASHG)
Production: 244, comprising 235 in the UK at Hurn and Weybridge and 9 under license at Bucharest-Baneasa (now Aurel Vlaicu IAP), Romania
First delivery: 22 Jan 65 to British United Airlines (c/n 014, G-ASJI)
Last delivery: May 91 to TAROM (c/n 409, YR-BRI)
Variants: One-Eleven 200 - initial production version powered by 2 Rolls-Royce Spey Mk.506 turbofans, with seating for up to 89 passengers (58 built);
One-Eleven 300 - improved version powered by Spey Mk.511s with increased weight and range (9 built);
One-Eleven 400 - as One-Eleven 300, but featuring ‘Americanized’ avionics for the US market (70 built);
One-Eleven 500 - stretched version with improved wing, powered by Spey Mk.512s, with seating for up to 119 passengers (95 built, including 9 in Romania);
One-Eleven 475 - version optimised for rough field, hot and high operations mating the One-Eleven 500 wing and powerplant with the shortened fuselage of early models (13 built).
Comments