BAe 146 BAe 146-100

The 146-100 is where the whole family starts: a short fuselage for around seventy passengers five abreast, a high wing with no leading-edge devices and four Avco Lycoming ALF 502 turbofans slung beneath it. It first flew from Hatfield on 3 September 1981 and received its Certificate of Airworthiness on 8 February 1983, shortly before Dan-Air put it into scheduled service that May. Short-field performance — a take-off run of about 1,195 metres at sea level — and low noise made it the reference aircraft for city airports and difficult strips: in 1985 Aspen Airways used a 146-100 to inaugurate the first scheduled jet service into Aspen, in the Rockies, from an airfield 7,820 feet above sea level. British Aerospace had expected the short version to outsell the rest, but airlines preferred the 146-200 and only 37 were built, three of them the Queen's Flight CC2s.