Hawker Siddeley HS 748 Andover CC.2

The Andover CC.2 designation misleads easily. The Andover C.1 is the tactical transport with rear ramp and kneeling gear; the CC.2 is the unmodified airliner, fitted inside for carrying senior passengers. They share a service name and little else.

Six aircraft were ordered from Hawker Siddeley. Two went to the Queen's Flight and four to special passenger duties. They reached No. 21 Squadron at Khormaksar first, which disbanded six months later, and passed to No. 32 Squadron at Northolt, the metropolitan communications unit, where they stayed for over eighteen years including detachments in Germany. The Duke of Edinburgh flew one of the Queen's Flight CC.2s during his tour of Mexico and the Caribbean in the autumn of 1964.

As a VIP transport the aircraft offered around forty-seven seats, at a gross weight of a little over twenty-one tonnes and a maximum cruise near four hundred kilometres per hour. The CC.2's convertible cabin also set a pattern for other government users: the Royal Australian Air Force's two VIP HS 748s were fitted out along Queen's Flight lines.

The 748 was a common head-of-state aircraft worldwide, with users in Argentina, Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Ecuador, India, Nepal, South Korea, Thailand, Tanzania, Venezuela and Zambia as well as the United Kingdom. The CC.2 is the British member of that family, and the one that stayed longest with a single squadron.