American Airlines’
Astrojet N5015
at New York’s La
Guardia in 1967.
The airline settled
on the BAC 1-11-400
variant after an
extensive evaluation
of the Douglas DC-9.
However, the latter
was running a couple
of years behind the
foreign challenger and
American was in a
hurry to receive jets.
A M B
C I
n the late 1950s, Hunting Aircraft identified a niche for a
30-seat jetliner, to link provincial cities that were too small to
support the larger de Havilland Comet or Boeing 707. The
new design was christened the Hunting 107 but in 1960,
before work had progressed beyond the drawing board, the
British government merged Hunting with Vickers-Armstrongs,
English Electric and the Bristol Aeroplane Company to create
the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC). Fortunately, BAC
agreed that demand existed for the aircraft and, furthermore,
favoured the Hunting 107 concept over rival in-house projects
such as the Vickers VC11 and Bristol 200. However, the
airframe needed several tweaks, including enlarging from 30 to
80 seats. The resulting aircraft was named the BAC 1-11 and
was publicly announced with a launch order from British United
Airways (BUA) – the first time a privately-owned British airline
had placed a launch order for a new jet.
The prototype BAC 1-11 (G-ASHG) was rolled out at
Bournemouth/Hurn on July 28, 1963 and first flew on August- Flight testing of the revolutionary ‘T-Tailed’ jet was strewn
with problems and on October 22 the prototype was lost during
a ‘deep stall’ that saw the elevators blanked from the airflow
by turbulence from the stalled wing – thereby rendering them
useless and the aircraft unflyable. The entire crew, including
BAC Chief Test Pilot Mike Lithgow OBE, were lost in the
tragedy and on August 20, 1964 a second prototype suffered a
similar fate, fortunately without loss of life.
S tat e s i d e
One-Elevens
As well as kickstarting Britain’s love of
package holidays the BAC 1-11 was also a
hit on the other side of the Atlantic,
as Charles Kennedy discusses.Britain’s Export Success
52 AIRLINER Classics 2018