Meet the crew of Trident Three G-AWZI; the flight deck now preserved at the FAST museum. Take a tour of the flight deck and hear the memories of the crew.
Lovely video, it brought back a lot of memories. I was a BA engineering apprentice between 1975 and '79. I then was a line maintenance engineer in Tech 1, terminal 1 at LHR working on the Trident. A very clever aircraft, far ahead of its time.
I was lucky enough to be on the extra shuttle from Belfast Aldergrove in 1981, 6 of us on the 3B and me the solo kid plus crew and I was in the Junior Jet club so they let me sit in the jump seat from about 20 mins in when I went to get my log signed. We flew into LHR 28R at darking dusk, a magical experience for me and now a sorely missed friend flying in the sky. Great British jets 👏
I was working on amb RRV and popped in here while on standby and saw this Trident cockpit. There were some guys in there who showed me around and I was very pleased to meet them. This aircraft is very dear to my heart because it used to take us from LHR back in 1970`s to see family in Ireland. I will always love the Trident. There is one near where I live at Duxford air museum🙂
Thank you so much for taking the time to give me tour of the flight deck. I really appreciate all the work you must have put into producing this and making it available.
I thought the last Trident commercial service was in fact G-AWZO Manchester to Heathrow on the evening of 31st December 1985 after it had flown a 'farewell to the Trident' flight (which I was on) from Manchester to low passes at Liverpool and IOM.
A rather wonderful cadre of gentlemen pilots who got to fly in an era of real high speed jet aircraft via hydraulic actuation, and not FBW computer arbitration. It would also be interesting to hear the viewpoints of the Chinese pilots with many years of hands on experience operating this ground breaking tri-jet.
Always loved the Trident. Now they dont need pilots or engineers - just a spotty computer geek in a dark room ! Chum of mine started like me, PPL, Instructor, CPL and "Any Way Possible". He ended up a Line Training Captain for EasyJet. On finals to land one day with an A320 and a 24 year old Captain fresh out of School they had a Hyd failure on short finals and the young Captain called to go around. Rob took control and landed straight ahead. On asking the Captain what his option to go around would have offered he replied "I thought it best to sort it out in the air". Such is the level of experience of low hour ab-initio "Toothpaste tube" Captains. For the uninitiated, a hydraulic leak - if left for a few minutes could / will end up with a loss of brakes or worse - complete loss of control of the flying surfaces as everything on the airbus is hydraulically controlled...
New subscriber, loved this video guys. Aviation has always been my interest, unfortunately my academic journey never took me to the heights of these wonderful men. I did get an apprenticeship at Rolls Royce in Glasgow. In my final year I was machining compressor blades for the Spey and Conway engines. That year they brought in a massive machine to create the main body shell of the RB211 engine. In my lunch break I could stand and watch this machine drill and tap hundreds of holes in a 3D operation on the casting. This engine went into the Lockheed Tristar aircraft and we saw this aircraft fly over the factory on its UK tour. Coming back to the Trident, when they opened the new Glasgow airport my home was on the landing flightpath and the first aircraft to come in was a BEA Comet 4B, followed by a British Eagle BAC 1-11 and a British United BAC 1-11. ( This order may be wrong, it was so long ago ! ) Absolutely British aviation at its best ! A few months later the Trident 1 replaced the beautiful Comet airliner. I just remembered also we had the Viscounts and Vanguards coming in. So lucky to be born in the 50's and see all this in my lifetime.
Wish science museum would stop hiding trident 3 zm as far as I know zm is 100% complete it would be good if we could see these guys do a taxi run in zm at wroughton belongs to the nation as far as I know and should be available to view all of the time and not once a year "come on science museum "
No CVR unfortunately - wasn't mandated . Human factors undoubtedly played their part - overbearing and autocratic capt with bad coronary artery disease & likely experiencing an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) just prior to the stall - meaning a heart attack/bad chest pain. We will never know why the droops were prematurely retracted.
WHY did the UK gov at the time involve themselves in the engines of the trident RR spey bypass gas turbines X3 affecting the takeoff and landing performance, it was to be a short field type, the RR Conways were available in 1962, the birth of the Trident, I heard thing related to this but I cannot find the story I heard a Trident pilot explain, I looked quite hard and it's not related to the 727 which came out a year later, the Trident was the only aircraft to have the Autoland feature 10 years before any other, it could still capable of 600 MPH, it was later fitted with another takeoff engine in the tail, including the APU was the only aircraft to have 5 jets in a 3 engine aircraft type, it was still a very good safe plane, It was very good as the airline choice in the early 1960's. also remember the TSR2 and the Avro Arrow types.
Lovely video, it brought back a lot of memories. I was a BA engineering apprentice between 1975 and '79. I then was a line maintenance engineer in Tech 1, terminal 1 at LHR working on the Trident. A very clever aircraft, far ahead of its time.
I was lucky enough to be on the extra shuttle from Belfast Aldergrove in 1981, 6 of us on the 3B and me the solo kid plus crew and I was in the Junior Jet club so they let me sit in the jump seat from about 20 mins in when I went to get my log signed.
We flew into LHR 28R at darking dusk, a magical experience for me and now a sorely missed friend flying in the sky.
Great British jets 👏
I was working on amb RRV and popped in here while on standby and saw this Trident cockpit. There were some guys in there who showed me around and I was very pleased to meet them. This aircraft is very dear to my heart because it used to take us from LHR back in 1970`s to see family in Ireland. I will always love the Trident. There is one near where I live at Duxford air museum🙂
Lovely video of those shared memories and skills. Thank you 😊
Thanks for posting this.
Thank you so much for taking the time to give me tour of the flight deck. I really appreciate all the work you must have put into producing this and making it available.
I love old school planes what nice guys you are my mums friend relative was a steward on the BOAC 707 his sir name is Forrest
Thank you gentlemen, very informative.
I thought the last Trident commercial service was in fact G-AWZO Manchester to Heathrow on the evening of 31st December 1985 after it had flown a 'farewell to the Trident' flight (which I was on) from Manchester to low passes at Liverpool and IOM.
A rather wonderful cadre of gentlemen pilots who got to fly in an era of real high speed jet aircraft via hydraulic actuation, and not FBW computer arbitration.
It would also be interesting to hear the viewpoints of the Chinese pilots with many years of hands on experience operating this ground breaking tri-jet.
Always loved the Trident. Now they dont need pilots or engineers - just a spotty computer geek in a dark room ! Chum of mine started like me, PPL, Instructor, CPL and "Any Way Possible". He ended up a Line Training Captain for EasyJet. On finals to land one day with an A320 and a 24 year old Captain fresh out of School they had a Hyd failure on short finals and the young Captain called to go around. Rob took control and landed straight ahead. On asking the Captain what his option to go around would have offered he replied "I thought it best to sort it out in the air". Such is the level of experience of low hour ab-initio "Toothpaste tube" Captains. For the uninitiated, a hydraulic leak - if left for a few minutes could / will end up with a loss of brakes or worse - complete loss of control of the flying surfaces as everything on the airbus is hydraulically controlled...
New subscriber, loved this video guys. Aviation has always been my interest, unfortunately my academic journey never took me to the heights of these wonderful men. I did get an apprenticeship at Rolls Royce in Glasgow. In my final year I was machining compressor blades for the Spey and Conway engines. That year they brought in a massive machine to create the main body shell of the RB211 engine. In my lunch break I could stand and watch this machine drill and tap hundreds of holes in a 3D operation on the casting. This engine went into the Lockheed Tristar aircraft and we saw this aircraft fly over the factory on its UK tour. Coming back to the Trident, when they opened the new Glasgow airport my home was on the landing flightpath and the first aircraft to come in was a BEA Comet 4B, followed by a British Eagle BAC 1-11 and a British United BAC 1-11. ( This order may be wrong, it was so long ago ! ) Absolutely British aviation at its best ! A few months later the Trident 1 replaced the beautiful Comet airliner. I just remembered also we had the Viscounts and Vanguards coming in. So lucky to be born in the 50's and see all this in my lifetime.
What a great video, thank you to all involved!
Great explanations from a very experienced crew. Great video
Enjoyed that
Wish science museum would stop hiding trident 3 zm as far as I know zm is 100% complete it would be good if we could see these guys do a taxi run in zm at wroughton belongs to the nation as far as I know and should be available to view all of the time and not once a year "come on science museum "
it was a good video thankyou
I would love one of these cockpit front quarter's if I could have one outside my flat1'st floor. I know I am a nobhead saying this but I can dream
Never give up the dream! Dreams do come true. Thanks for your kind comments.
Well done to all of you, I found it very interesting and informative.
I always queried the reason why Trident crashed in Staines.
Was it the forward droop flats distended too soon?
Hello Alan; they retracted the flaps at noise abatement then the droops. They should have kept the droops out until they were 225 knots and 6,000.
No CVR unfortunately - wasn't mandated . Human factors undoubtedly played their part - overbearing and autocratic capt with bad coronary artery disease & likely experiencing an acute coronary syndrome (ACS) just prior to the stall - meaning a heart attack/bad chest pain. We will never know why the droops were prematurely retracted.
WHY did the UK gov at the time involve themselves in the engines of the trident RR spey bypass gas turbines X3 affecting the takeoff and landing performance, it was to be a short field type, the RR Conways were available in 1962, the birth of the Trident, I heard thing related to this but I cannot find the story I heard a Trident pilot explain, I looked quite hard and it's not related to the 727 which came out a year later, the Trident was the only aircraft to have the Autoland feature 10 years before any other, it could still capable of 600 MPH, it was later fitted with another takeoff engine in the tail, including the APU was the only aircraft to have 5 jets in a 3 engine aircraft type, it was still a very good safe plane, It was very good as the airline choice in the early 1960's. also remember the TSR2 and the Avro Arrow types.
Steve won’t remember me but I flew with him as a new first officer on 747 classic sometime around 1994.