Hawker Siddeley Trident Trident 1C

The 1C is what happened when the original DH.121 was shrunk to British European Airways' measure. The airline judged a 111-seat aircraft too large for its routes, so the design was cut down: Rolls-Royce Spey 505 engines of 43.8 kN instead of the planned Medways, a maximum weight of 48,000 kg, 1,500 km of range and 97 seats. That reduction brought the T-tail and the nose that would define the type's silhouette. BEA ordered 24 aircraft on 12 August 1959.

Some of the changes other customers had asked for were applied to the prototype, which was renamed Trident 1C: a larger tank in the wing centre section raised maximum weight to 52,160 kg. The first aircraft, registered G-ARPA, flew on 9 January 1962 from Hatfield and the type entered service on 1 April 1964, two months after its rival the Boeing 727.

With the 1C the Trident earned its place in history: on 4 November 1966 it made the first zero-visibility automatic landing by an airliner, solving by technical means the diversions and cancellations fog imposed on Heathrow. By 1965 BEA had 15 Tridents in its fleet and by March 1966 there were 21.