Vickers VC10 BAC VC10 Type 1101

Type 1101 is the designation of the 'Standard' VC10s built for BOAC, the airline for whose hot-and-high African routes the aircraft had been conceived. It is the version that sets the type's reference specification: four flight crew and three cabin crew, up to 151 passengers, 48.36 m long, 44.55 m in span, 12.04 m high, 264.9 m² of wing area, 63,278 kg empty and 141,521 kg maximum take-off weight, with 81,490 litres of fuel. It was powered by four tail-mounted Rolls-Royce Conway RCo 42 turbofans of 21,000 lbf (93 kN) each; maximum speed was 930 km/h, economic cruise 890 km/h at 12,000 m and range 9,410 km. When the Super VC10 (Type 1150) appeared, the original design was retrospectively renamed the Standard VC10.

The number of aircraft BOAC ordered changed many times; English Wikipedia records that up to 35 Type 1101s were ordered at various times. In May 1961, in accordance with its contracts with Vickers, BOAC amended its order to 15 Standards and 35 Super VC10s, eight of the Supers having a combi configuration with a large cargo door and stronger floor. In December 1961 the contract was cut again, to 12 Standards and 20 Supers; according to vc10.net, Treasury intervention over capital expenditure was largely responsible for the three cancelled Standards. The already planned construction numbers 816, 817 and 818, to be registered G-ARVN, G-ARVO and G-ARVP, were never built, which made G-ARVM (number 815) the last Type 1101. The twelve airframes carried construction numbers 804 to 815; the G-ARVD registration was skipped because, according to vc10.net, an official at the registration board found the last two letters unacceptable.

Several of the early Type 1101s worked in the flight-test programme before delivery. G-ARVB first flew on 21 December 1962 and was allocated to take-off and landing performance work: on 6 May 1963 it flew a performance sortie shadowed by a Boscombe Down Javelin, with Roland Beamont alongside Jock Bryce on the flight deck; on 12 August 1963 it went to Torrejon for four weeks of tropical trials, and on 21 October it flew on to Cairo and Johannesburg, the first equator crossing by a VC10. G-ARVC flew on 21 February 1963 and took part in the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget that June. G-ARVE flew on 15 April 1963 and was used for drag-reduction trials: Fields Aircraft fitted it with engine pylons in Super VC10 configuration and later returned it to Type 1101 configuration. These aircraft went to Marshall of Cambridge to have test equipment removed and be brought to production standard: G-ARVE was delivered to BOAC on 1 October 1964, G-ARVC on 1 December 1964 and G-ARVB on 6 February 1965. The last, G-ARVM, first flew on 8 July 1964 from the Weybridge runway in BOAC's 'Golden Speedbird' scheme.

The certificate of airworthiness was awarded on 23 April 1964 and on 29 April the type opened regular passenger service between London and Lagos. The 12 Type 1101s were purchased in 1964-65. The VC10 became immensely popular in the BOAC fleet with passengers and crews alike, who praised its comfort and low cabin noise, and the airline, and later British Airways, obtained higher load factors with it than with the 707 or any other aircraft in its fleet. Pilot conversion training was mostly carried out at Prestwick, where crews practised take-offs and especially visual circling approaches, essential at African airfields of the time that offered an instrument approach to one end of the runway only. G-ARVM became the preferred training aircraft, so much so that it gave its name to the Victor Mike Tie Club, whose ties raised money for a children's village near Prestwick. Line service had its own episodes: G-ARVC was leased to Nigeria Airways from January 1966 to July 1967; G-ARVB lost its radome in an ice encounter on 2 February 1968; and on 12 January 1970 G-ARVC clipped a DHC-6 Twin Otter with its wing while taxiing at Los Angeles. Nigeria Airways leased a BOAC aircraft again in 1969, and it was destroyed in a landing accident at Lagos in November that year; vc10.net's airframe list records G-ARVA as 5N-ABD.

With the merger of BOAC and BEA into British Airways, ownership passed to the British Airways Board on 1 April 1974. The arrival of the 747 and the Standard's higher seat-mile costs compared with the Super VC10 led to its withdrawal: ten of the eleven survivors were retired in 1974-75. G-ARVE flew its last service on 23 October 1974 (Tehran-Beirut-London) with 36,254 hours and 13,460 landings. Five were leased to Gulf Air until 1977-78 and then bought by the RAF, which converted them at Filton into K.2 tankers for 101 Squadron: G-ARVL (ZA140), G-ARVG (ZA141), G-ARVI (ZA142), G-ARVK (ZA143) and G-ARVC (ZA144). One served the Government of Qatar as a VIP transport until 1981, when the RAF bought it as an instructional airframe (G-ARVJ, ZD493); another was used by the Government of the United Arab Emirates until 1981 and is preserved in its colours at Hermeskeil, Germany (G-ARVF). The remaining three (G-ARVB, G-ARVE and G-ARVH) were traded in to Boeing as part payment for 747s and scrapped at Heathrow in September 1976. G-ARVM kept flying as a stand-by for the Super VC10 fleet — on 15 May 1977 it appeared at the Silver Jubilee Air Display at White Waltham — until in October 1979 it flew to Cosford for the British Airways collection at the RAF Museum; in 2006 it was reduced to its fuselage, which is now displayed at Brooklands Museum.