Reply to post: "rear-engined planes"

"rear-engined planes"

I always preferred travelling in the rear-engined planes, 1-11s rather than Tridents. They were so much quieter.

Nitpicky, but the Trident was a rear-engined plane, only with three engines rather than the two of the BAC111.

I remember Trident well from my youth: could have been a world-beater, but as usual it was screwed up by imbecile British politicians, with a helping hand from BEA/BOAC (who together also managed to bugger up the chances of the even better VC-10, which was a fab plane to fly in). Post-childhood, I got periodically shuttled around facing backwards in VC-10s, and its hot'n'high performance made for some exciting takeoffs if the crabair crew were in the mood. Does the VC-10 still hold the record for fastest subsonic airliner transit across the Atlantic?

Anyway, I agree rear engines were a boon, but those were the days of noisy engines: Conways were loud and a bit smoky ISTR.

(All time favourite: Lockheed L1011. Did a few transatlantic flights in the 80s and I fell in love with the Tristar.)