Why Pilots Respected the Hawker Siddeley Trident

Video from the channel Flight Zone about Hawker Siddeley Trident, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 10:46. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

The video explains why pilots trusted the Trident. It focuses on its automatic landing system and the redundancy built into the whole design.

In the mid-1950s, BEA, satisfied with the Vickers Viscount turboprop, was wary of jets. The Caravelle changed its mind and, in July 1956, it set the requirements for a short-range jet with more than two engines. De Havilland responded in 1957 with the DH 121, a trijet with Rolls-Royce engines. In 1959 BEA asked for the aircraft to be scaled down: the Medway was replaced by a less powerful Spey and the range was cut by more than half.

Each engine drove its own hydraulic system. The avionics bay forced the nose gear to be moved two feet to the left. The automatic landing system, from Hawker Siddeley and Smiths, achieved the first automatic landing in regular passenger service on 10 June 1965 and took the aircraft to Category IIIC. It had a moving map fed by Doppler navigation and was the first aircraft with a quick-access flight data recorder. The 1E, 2E and 3B versions followed. The video recalls the Staines crash of 18 June 1972 and the fatigue cracks found in 1977. British Airways retired it in 1985, and in China it flew until 1995.