Hawker Siddeley HS 748 HS 748 Series 2A

The Series 2A was not a new aeroplane but the same one better powered. Announced in 1967, it carried Dart engines in Mk 532 or Mk 534 form and raised the maximum take-off weight again. The improvement run was rounded off from 1971 with options the market had been asking for: a large freight door in the rear cabin and a strengthened floor, which opened the aircraft up to pure cargo work.

This series accounts for much of the programme's success. With more than a hundred and fifty aircraft it made the 748 one of the better-selling British postwar airliners and let it take customers from the Fokker F27, Philippine Airlines among them, which had been the Dutch type's largest operator. India, the Caribbean, Latin America and Australasia held the biggest fleets.

A typical passenger cabin held between forty and fifty-odd seats, though most late-serving aircraft flew as convertibles or as straight freighters. The type also worked as a bulk fuel hauler, with seven or eight fixed tanks in the cabin, and as a head-of-state transport in a long list of countries. More than a third of the type's scheduled operations were flown from rough strips with minimal facilities.

The Series 2A outlasted every other version in commercial work. The last airworthy 748 in the western hemisphere, a 2A in freighter configuration, made its final flight in May 2025 to a Canadian museum, and shortly afterwards the British authority withdrew the type certificate, grounding the remaining British-built examples.