"This aircraft failed, but it paved the way for others". British aircraft industry in a nutshell.

The autoland system on the Trident was exceptionally good for its time. At one point Heathrow airport complained that there was a build up of rubber on specific places on their runways where all the Tridents were landing on the same spot.

Thank you for the wonderful video. I flew on a BEA Trident in 1969 from LHR to ZRH. I remember the brown leather interior and novel center engine intake. Amazing plane looking back with its advanced Autoland system. Smart guys, British engineers! After all, they invented the first jet engine, the first pressurized jet transport and countless other innovations. We owe them a great deal. Bravo chaps!

The HS-121 was far ahead of its time. Unfortunately, as with most great designs/inventions, everything is ruined when the politicians / executives get involved. Thank you Skyships - another superb presentation - I especially like the reference(s) to 'Albion'. Dave (Hibernia).

I loved the Trident--it was my first jet command. Our airline did not want the plane, we wanted the B 727 which was better suited to our routes and the temperatures that we operated in. It was much more advanced, technically than our B707s. We had the Trident 1E with a greater range than the 1, but still gave us a range problem between Lahore and Dacca. We never had that navigation system or the auto-land. We did have one in an unusual configuration. The President's plane had a small, extra engine that could boost the speed rapidly if a stall condition occurred. The President gave the airline his plane and only used it (with our crews) when it was needed. The 1E had an auto pilot that had separate engagement levers for roll and pitch. We did not have the "motorcycle" control column but had the usual half wheel, which we preferred. Its radar was the best for its time--you could use it for navigation as well as its primary use of avoiding bad weather--and we had plenty of that.One of the instructors who trained our pilots was the wartime night fighter ace, Group Captain Cunningham. In temperatures above 30C (and we sometimes landed in 40+C) the brakes would overheat and blow tyres. Cunningham taught us to take idle reversers (only on the two side engines) while crossing the threshold for landing--bringing in full reverse for touch down. Very few pilots used this as it took a bit of extra skill but I used it a lot --and it saved me from overheating the brakes. In summer this plane cruised at Mach .78 in high temps, but in winter it became an amazing climber and cruised at Mach .88----our B707s cruised at Mach .82. We sometimes overtook them en-route. HS upped the price of spare parts to the extent that it was uneconomical--even with full loads--so we sold them to China.The Chinese loved the planes and bought many more from HS. The Chinese could make their own spares. The plane was very sensitive to speed on approach--if you let the speed bleed off, it would go into a "mush descent" which could only be arrested by going to full go-around power. Many years later, when I was Chief on B747s, I had lunch at the Paris Air Show with the Chairman of BAC. They wanted to sell us the the BAC 146 for our Northern Operations. I reminded him of the trick played on us by the huge increase in Trident spares. He did not deny that, but assured me that it would not be repeated for the BAC 146. We never bought them!

As I'm English, I'm proper pleased that you've included the Trident on your channel. She's such an iconic aircraft in aviation history and deserves more recognition than she currently gets. Thank you mate!!🇬🇧🇬🇧✌✌

Sky is the apple of our eye. Endlessly articulate, intelligent, artful, fascinating. 💛😎

I flew aboard several Tridents during the 70s when my family visited friends and family in Yugoslavia. My last Trident flight was in August 1981 on a Trident 2 from Zagreb to LHR. My father and I sat in the rear facing row immediately behind door 2R. I can still remember seeing Big Ben/Parliament as we flew the approach into Heathrow. One flight in '73 on BEA from LHR-BEG the flight crew left the cockpit door open on finals.

Skyships Eng is one of my favorite channels on KZfaq. I love the content & his accent is the cherry on top :D

Yes, finally! I love the British aircraft, from the Bristol Britannia to the Hawker Siddeley HS 748 to the BAe 146 and everything in between. Great video Sky as always, keep up the great videos and upload schedules!

It's not really fair to class the Trident as a failure considering it was designed primarily for a single operator and ended up doubling it's initial sales target, the plane was very profitable for it's manufacturer. It was a great plane, there would probably still be some flying somewhere today if they hadn't all been retired early due to the noise regs.

In 1969 I flew in a Trident from Rome to London - a flight whose memory remains with me to this day. Loved that aeroplane and sad to see it did not have the success it deserved.

it is great to listen to the fantastic researches you have done and your great knowledge about aviation

thank you for this video I 've been waiting for a video about the trident for so long

You could hear them take off from Malaga when you were plane spotting on the roof at Manchester.

Great video Sky. Very informative. Really glad you were able to explain that offset nose gear.

the safety record was excellent as far as remember. One was lost in a mid air collision due to ATC error, another one the droops were retracted early. none, as far i recall crashed due to design errors

Thanks Sky, great vid. I was lucky to fly on a British Airways Trident back in 1982 with rear facing seats.

It was so noisy.. I lived in Norwood Green - west London as child and the Trident was the only other aircraft besides Concorde that was clearly audible even with the TV on and indoors. Those shots of the Comet 4 - wow what a beautiful aircraft... Surely the most elegant jet airliner ever.? Great post once again Skyships... I just love your videos..

Another FAB doco on UK aviation pioneers, brings back fond memories of my plane spotting days in 1970 @ Ringway! Cheers

You nailed it in the opening. The British always seemed to design airplanes for a national Carrier. Rest of the aviation world Seem to do market research and then determine what kind of plane to build.

My father was a flight simulator instructor with BEA teaching pilots to use the Trident’s auto landing systems. I had great fun “flying” with him at work in between training sessions whenever we could get away with it.

I loved flying on the trident it thrilled me being on board such a beautiful aircraft cutting edge in its day

This and the 707 were my favourite planes to fly.

Glad to see Lt. Columbo making an appearance at 4:38

Very competently produced video. Great footage, great text. I really appreciate your work.

remember flying on these as a child, always loved the look of the 3 engine layout.

I lived about 5 miles from the factory. Boy they were loud! U could hardly hear it's relacement, the BAe 146!

Good job, Sky, as always. Great footage at 3:50 of the FedEx 727 landing at Merrill Field in Anchorage, Alaska, some years ago. Merrill Field is a small general aviation field, and FedEx donated that plane to the University of Alaska's aviation program. Must have been exciting to see such a big plane land at such a short field!

I saw one do a barrel roll over Hatfield airfield back in the 1970s where Hawker Siddeley had their headquarters.

One of your best. Great video!

Brilliant, utterly brilliant presentation. Well thought out and most interesting and informative. Jolly Good!

Loved watching Trident movements at Glasgow Airport (Abbotsinch) in the 70's and early 80's - at that time it was used primarily are the Shuttle, a service that ran between Scotland and London.

Been a while since British isles called Albion. There's a Trident at Manchester airport you can walk around.

As a kid in the 70s I spent many hours plane spotting at Elmdon Airport, Birmingham. We were lucky if we got more than 3 flights an hour! The majority were BA One-Eleven's, but looked forward to the Tridents and Comets. Great video - makes me feel nostalgic :0)

Sky, please do a video on the VC-10!

Man, I'm glad I discovered your channel. You videos are so interesting! Well researched and narrated. Keep up the great work.

Informative, engineering-wise, as always and top class presentation.

Great job, very much enjoy your videos.

Awesome video and footage. I have always been fascinated by british commercial jets.

Now that's what you call flying! Wonderful stuff.

I love the old BEA livery. Thank you 😊

Wonderful video great to see planes I flew on.

So pleased you covered the Trident. I used to pass one everyday when I was working at Heathrow. It was located at the TBA engineering base where I was. It was moved when we vacated and all moved to TBC (and me to Boho) when they started knocking everything down for the new hangers and engineering for the new fleet.

117 Tridents versus 1,872 Boeing 707s! Wow, that’s a HUGE market share difference.

I Love this Aviation History Video is Awesome!!!!!

Amazing video

Hello mate, thank you for this video as I was not aware of said history

My first plastic model assembled. Really fond of this plane.

I flew on quite a few Tridents in their heyday, great planes to fly on!!

Do a video on the 797. What it would have been and how corona ruined it

Great Video - as ever! It's always fascinating to see how far we've come since the days of Otto Lilienthal and the Wright Brothers. I had no idea that Autoland was around THAT early! I don't know how you manage to find the time to collect all this information AND the great original footage but please do keep it up!

Good for short runway , nice avionic systems 🔵

Hi. I'm pretty sure the Caravelle was a twin engine jet. Keep up the good work! Love your videos BTW. Great job!

I flew on one of the first international flights into China in January 1978 aboard a CAAC Trident from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. It was quite strange to see this lonely little Chinese aircraft in the middle of the tarmac at Kai Tak Airport amongst all of the western Boeing 747s. At that time in Hong Kong nobody had seen a Chinese aircraft before. The takeoff was quite extraordinary - the pilot must have been ex-military. After the takeoff run the aircraft just went straight up with an amazing rate of climb. It must have been at least 30 degrees pitch and maybe more. The pilot continued in this fashion all the way to Guangzhou - only about 30 minutes. At Guangzhou we were the only aircraft and the terminal was a very empty place apart from our passengers. Enormous contrast to the present day.

LOOKS BOOTYFULL....OF ENGINES THAT THANGÉ !

Mid 1980’s, in a bar frequented by a mixed bag of airline pilots, a senior British pilot was holding court and boring a few of his younger colleagues talking at length about flying the Trident in his youth as a first officer. The younger pilots politely listened about the airplane’s autoland capability or it’s design allowing reverse thrust in-flight to help it aggressively descend (most pilots knew the airplane’s reputation as a dog, with regard to poor takeoff performance (earning the airplane it’s nickname, the ground gripper) and, as mentioned in this video, it was actually a commercial failure compared to the B727). Eventually, a Qantas pilot in the bar had enough of the history lecture and told the Brit pilot, “listen mate, we all figure that flying that Trident was a bit like making love to a sheep....it might have seemed like fun at the time, but you don’t talk about it later....”

nice content,,,,,amazing video

Memories! Worked at ZRH in the ‘70’s doing load control & aircraft dispatch on T2’s T3’s and BAC 1-11’s. Trident such an elegant lady.

Good choice of music volume as well professional

Flew all Tridents 1,2and3 many, many times. with BEA .Remember the rear facing seats up front where you directly faced pax ..Also, Trident one of very few aircraft certificated to allow reverse thrust while still airborne. Flying into Milan Linate one day with a a nasty float I recall the pilot flying engaging the clam shells and heavily opening the throttles to get the damn plan onto the rapidly reducing remaining runway and kill the lift and get on the brakes.(From frequent trips into Linate. I knew the usual touchdown point by the ‘hut’ that was on the starboard side of the airfield and that day we sailed past it still in the air! As an aside in those days(1970+ ) 200 cigarettes on board cost £1.00 and gin and tonic£0.25 - and it was customary to tell the steward to ‘ keep the change’ which they always gratuitously did.- Yes the Trident was a very welcome site on the tarmac with its distinctive tail marking after 3 weeks in Moscow with shocking food and its then USSR soviet oppression. I recall also waiting to board a Trident in Lisbon for the return to LHR - there was a technical problem and from the airport window I saw the flight engineer with the cowling open in the rain working on the centre engine doing something . Finally all was closed up and we boarded and took off. Those were the days of no security but also the airline cartels.

MiG-21, 25, 31? Great video..like always!

Can you do the history of the VC-10.

I remember flying in one when young...great planes...

Great video man. Miss the piano music you used to have lol.

Thank you . I got new information the first time I know it especially about wheels. In 1966 the first accident of the crash of a Kuwait Airways Trident plane occurred before its arrival at the airport building coming from Beirut with 72 passengers on board. Thank God there were no human losses because the plane fell on a sandy ground close to the airport

It was my favourite to fly on. Happy days. :)

Lovely Plane. Flow on one quite a few times! Lived directly under flightpath to Manchester (UK) Airport - Planes normally flew over at 800ft or so... ONE day, Jet noise (behind house) kept on increasing! We dashed to front window, to see a Trident - FULL throttle, angled steeply - Almost skimming rooftops? No internet! Such stuff didn't make the News? A bit disconcerting though! :P

Excellent video, Sky. Another masterpiece. I used to work for Rolls-Royce Aero Engines. One of the old hands said the Trident was known asthe “Gripper” because of how long it clung to the runway on take-off.

Excellent Narration! Great video!👍 (My first ever flight was on a Trident out of LHR to Geneva Suisse)

I flew in one of these as a BA flight in 1980 from London. I was allowed into the cockpit as a kid. Those days are long gone. I don't remember anything remarkable about it but then again I was a kid.

The lesson here was painfully learned by making an Aircraft for just one customer . Airbus has been a far greater success by careful Market research and building Aircraft to fill the needs of many Airlines, thus at last the strangle hold of Boeing has been met, To day Airbus has , I believe 50/55% Market share of the Worlds Airliner market. The lessons were learned the hard way as I believe the HS Trident was a well built and rugged Aircraft with Blind Landing which was ground breaking in its Day.

She'll always be the princess of the skies to me.

To have that level of automation on an airliner in the early 1960's is unbelievably clever and extremely impressive, that's why I'm proper proud of our aviation industry. 🇬🇧🇬🇧✌✌

I worked for BAOC and Later British Airways and in my early career - late 60's I regularly used to travel to Geneva to IATA on business. Thes flights were all operated by Tridents, usually a mk 2. I can remember on one occassion where Swissair were cancelling their flights where they used DC9 because of Fog at Heathrow. but we made a perfect landing using the Cat 3 autolanding and what an experience it was. Once landed you could barely see the edge of the runway. On another occassion on a latistish friday evening flight the aircraft opened up its engines at Geneva which had 3 statelite passeger terminals at the time and we roared by the first terminal still on the gound, up came the second termianl, and we were still on the ground and then gradually up came the third terminal and we were only just rotating and we gradually climbed away. Quite worrying if like I had been seated in the first terminal and seeing most aircraft getting airborune before the first terminal. Not the Triden with its fast wing ( Kruger flaps and all that) though. Give me a VC10 any day. I have flown on all three types of trident and also had a splendid go on a simulator at Southall.. A lot and I mean a lot of fun.

One more left Skyships Eng, the BAC One-Eleven. Excellent job as always. Thanks

What a great video!! Very interesting info about this plane that I believe not many knew about!! Thank you

Excellent as always Skyships Eng. Thank you. D.A., J.D. NYC

Thanks for the video. Just a suggestion. Maybe worthwhile investing in a better microphone? Or is it the environment that is creating some echoing? Keep it up!

Fascinating aircraft. The landing gear (oh, excuse me UK..."undercarriage") of the Trident is fascinating. The British seemed to find unconventional solutions to issues during this period. Compare the Trident to the much more conventional 727 landing gear and systems, is it a wonder that the Boeing product was more successful? My dad was a flight test engineer for Boeing and worked on what he called the "Two Seven." Anyway, I am always so impressed with your thorough videos, Sky. Thank you for putting these together. Fascinating!

The first trijet...with 5 engines. True story

Had it not been for unfortunate crashes this should have been a great success. The crashes and ALS were never linked like the 737 Max has been. Another leader in aviation in my opinion. Some good comments below too.

That front landing gear drives me crazy

Being from USA, I'm not well aquainted with Trident, it wasn't until I saw this video that I noticed the offset nose wheel. Sky is right in saying that it's a "perfectionists nightmare"... Lol. Another great video.

The Hawker Siddeley Trident was introduced on 1 April 1964, two months after the Boeing 727. 177 Tridents were manufactured. Boeing produced 1,832 727's.

Skyships. Sir as always a fine documentary but unusually one I might find some fault with. I think you underplay: The British policy of designing for the UK airlines and not to the original design possibilities. This murdered the Vickers VC-10 also amongst many projects. The airline getting just what they wanted then changed their minds leaving the producers with a white elephant. The political force of H.M. Government in trying to force consolidate the UK aircraft industry. The initial BEA required downsizing destroying the need for the RR Medway engine which bit back again when trying to upsize the now undersized Trident and the need for a fourth engine. Or fifth if including the APU. ( Nothing to do with this but look at the picture of the RB. 142 Medway on Wikipedia. Where have you seen something similar?) What I'm finding odd though is your one complete omission of one feature. I thought you were possibly generous in saying that the take off performance was *"Not Record Breaking."* I think I've seen it quoted that the performance on take off was *"Proof Of The curvature Of the earth!"* Yes the DH/HS/BAC 121 had advanced devices to assist the performance of the wing but a quick wing with not quite the engine it should have had did make take off performance interesting. Landing performance was another thing altogether. Ignoring it being able to land when other planes would be diverting its actual physical performance was outstanding. It could come in high. Over terrain or weather and drop faster than a stone. Over 10,000 feet/min. One of the few aircraft able to deploy reverse thrust in flight (Off top of head MD 80 also?) See 3.06 onwards. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/eJuSqtpistbFfmQ.html Still think your documentaries are top drawer Skyships and look forward to being able to watch the VC=10 documentary again soon. Please, Sky I ask on nearly every documentary that you do, can you convert the engine thrust into lbs force. Be it aurally or a quick subtitle. I can convert other units in my head but I have to pause to look up and convert thrust figures.

I liked a lot this video, as I lke the majority of this channel´s videos. So, I would like to suggest to this channel to make a video about the Fokker F28/ Fokker 100 jets.A video about the Fokker F27/ Fokker 50 turboprops would also be very interesting too. Equally, I would like you to make a video about the Embraer EMB 120 Brasília turbo prop. Thank you very much for your attention to my comment.

The European aviation industry in those days seemed to always run into the same wall. Whether it was the British or continental Europe (mainly the French firms), they had lots of good ideas and unquestionable engineering talent that were systematically undermined by poor understanding of the market (with the possible exception of the Caravelle). It really took Airbus to turn that around and even then, the original A300 was still designed and initially marketed with the same old mistakes, that is based on the assumption that it could just be pitched to domestic government-owned airlines who would be directed to buy it.

Another great example of a leading British design ham strung by, in this case, BEA. Makes you wonder what could have been for the Trident and the VC10.

Please do Fokker 28/100, that would be awesome

Love the Trident

My father was at Hatfield on January 1962 for a full 3 months training on the Comet. Witnessed the first prototype Trident flight. Later on, in 1970 , at Nicosia Cyprus, we had the prototype Trident 3, being filmed for BEA advertisements. It was loaded with barrels of water and test equipment . A helicopter of Olympic was used for aerial shots of the ad, a segment of which exists in YT. In conclusion, the 3 series, was a 3 engines jet, which actually had 5 engines including the APU.

The (maybe) most famous Trident is that one abandoned since 1974, in Nicosia Airport, Cyprus, which since then is in the "Dead Zone"

back in the 50s and 60s when the UK was a powerhouse, had 20 different car companies and even aircraft manufacturing companies of its own. Today a far cry from these times of innovation.

Trident 1E which came to Pakistan had underpowered engines, that was probably the only fault for the hot and warm weather it was used in. For its time it was the most advanced aircraft electronically. The 727 came after and picked up a lot of things from here. This was the first Trijet conception and it paid for that in a crash of a test model. The super stall came from here and the stick shaker and stick pusher were ideas which moved from here into practice in the industry.

Love the very small snapshot of London Bridge at 4:37 where you see Peter Falk aka Colombo taking a picture of the bridge in one of the episodes where he solves a case in the UK.

Heroic speech for a flying Austin Midget.

Thank you X I

Flew on one in 1968, BEA flight from Zurich to London.

Where do you find all these old high res film scans?