FS2002 DH106 Comet 4C PJ-COM 'Eclipse' in 1950s scheme

de Havilland started work on the Comet design following the Brabazon Committee's proposals for post war commercial aviation in 1943. A design for an aircraft to fly the Atlantic at 500 mph was proposed and was accepted by BOAC. Production started on an initial order of 8 in 1947.

The new aircraft was a huge advancement in aerodynamics, materials and performance. It had a pressurized cabin and with it's 4 Rolls Royce Ghost (Avons in later versions) turbo jets, it could fly much higher & faster than previous airliners.
BOAC took delivery in 1951 & put the aircraft into evaluation on a number of routes. After very successful trials, the BOAC Comets started the worlds first jet passenger service in May 1952, London Heathrow to Johannesburg.

There were 3 crashes in the first year. Two were put down to pilot error, with over rotation on take off blamed. Another was put down to an in flight break up due to the severe turbulence of a tropical storm. However when another two mysteriously broke up in flight in 1954, the aircraft's air worthiness certificate was revoked & the Comet was grounded.

This event sparked the largest accident investigation effort that the world had ever seen, establishing the British as world leaders in accident investigation. The crashed Comet was rebuilt in a hangar as engineers searched for a cause. Another Comet was submerged in a huge water tank and was repeatedly pressurized to quickly simulate hundreds of flights. After one of these caused a rupture in the fuselage, they had their answer. The problem was found to be due to metal fatigue. The repeated change in pressure had weakened the metal where the stress was concentrated at the corner of a window.

To their enormous credit, de Havilland imediately published all of their data & findings to prevent possible further loss of life. This however effectively handed the market to Boeing & Douglas, with their 707 & DC-8 projects taking full advantage of the research.

The windows were redesigned, with the square shape being rounded, to dissipate the stress. A number of other improvements eventually saw the Comet reintroduced as the Comet 4 in 1958. The Comet was never taken on in great numbers, due in part to it's tarnished reputation. However the Comet 4 did go on to prove itself as a sound & reliable aircraft. It gave many years service & rebuilt the Comet name, so that it could rightly be remembered with pride as the World's first jet airliner.

TCA flew the Comet for many years on both long and medium haul flights. This splendid example wears the 50s livery, and is available for special flights by arrangement with the President.

FS2002 Vickers Super VC-10 PJ-VSJ 'Port-Au-Prince' in 1960s scheme

In the early 1950's Vickers were already working on designs for a 4 engined jet airliner, originally known as the V1000. Compared with the Comet, it was a very modern design, featuring a wider fuselage, slotted flaps, a variable incidence tailplane & much better performance. Unfortunately, the government pulled the plug on the project, as the prototype neared completion. It is suspected that behind the scenes dealing with the Americans may have led to this strange decision. The government’s action effectively stopped the aircraft from becoming the commercial success that it should have been.

BOAC stated that it still wanted the aircraft, but only to fly their 'Empire routes' to Africa & Australia. They stated specifically that they did not want a Transatlantic airliner.
Their strict requirements had to be incorporated by Vickers & the project continued as the VC-10. BOAC ordered 35 in 1957, with an option for 20 more.

The prototype first flew on 29th June 1962 & it entered service with BOAC in April 1964.

The VC-10 was designed to give good takeoff performance from hot & high altitude airports, often with short runways. Powered by 4 Rolls Royce Conway bypass engines, it's large wings, leading edge slats & huge Fowler flaps, gave it the take off & landing performance of a much smaller plane.
But in designing it this way, other trade offs had to be made, particularly in fuel economy.
In hindsight BOAC had made a bad judgment in asking for a design to fit the existing airports. With the arrival of the Boeing 707 & Douglas DC-8, most of the airports began to extend their runways, so as not to be left behind. This made the VC-10’s design advantage unnecessary to most major destinations & hindered it’s future sales.

Vickers, worried about the type's appeal to other airlines, had set the VC-10's fuel capacity high enough to allow non-stop flights across the Atlantic. BOAC had stated from the start that they did not want this. Vickers also set about a stretched version, with a 28ft fuselage extension. BOAC demanded that the stretch be reduced to just 13ft before they would place an order. This not quite as stretched version became the Super VC-10.

Relations between Vickers & BOAC were not particularly good, with the airline constantly changing its order quantities & even publicly criticising the aircraft in an attempt to gain a subsidy for operating it.
The Super VC-10 entered service with BOAC in April 1965, bizarrely on the ‘not wanted’ Transatlantic service to New York.

Other airlines did take up the VC-10, but never in great quantities. BUA (later British Caledonian), Ghana, Malawi, Gulf Air, Nigerian had the Standard and East African had the Super. BOAC later became British Airways, who flew both types for many years. The RAF also used both types, taking most of the surplus from BOAC's reduced orders.

Renowned for it's quiet cabin & sparkling performance, the VC-10 was amazingly popular with both flight crews & passengers. It did managed some passenger service into the 1980's, but was on the whole phased out rather early.

TCA flew the Super VC-10 for many years on both long and medium haul flights. This splendid example wears the 60s livery, and is available for special flights by arrangement with the President.

It now only operates in the RAF, where it has been a good servant for many years as transport & as the converted K2 & K3 in-flight refueling tanker.
In all, only 54 VC-10's were built.

There are 4 static models on public display.
3 in England at Cosford, Duxford & Vickers Design Facility Weybridge/Brooklands.
1 in Germany at Hermeskeil.

FS2002 Hawker Siddeley Trident 2E PJ-HSC 'Mustique' in 1980s scheme

In de Havilland’s original proposal, the DH121, a larger & more powerful aircraft than the Trident ended up being. BEA signed a Letter of Intent in 1957, which gave the go ahead for the development program to begin.
A full family of aircraft with higher capacity & new upgraded engines was intended. The Government decided, before production started, to get the Americans involved in the extended project. A US deligation including people from Boeing was given full access to the plans, but nothing came of it.
Soon after, the Boeing 727 emerged & eventually took the market, with a very similar design to the originally planed DH121.

Before production of the DH121 started, BEA decided that the design had to be modified. Passenger numbers had been droping & although this turned out to be just a dip in an upward trend, BEA insisted that the aircraft be scaled down with a capacity of only 79. This also meant that the proposed engines were now not needed & Rolls Royce Speys were used instead. With the design modified, BEA finally made a formal agreement for 24 aircraft in 1959.

In 1960, de Havilland became part of Hawker Siddeley, in the Government forced mergers which also saw the creation of BAC. The HS121, as it became known, was also given the name Trident by the Chairman of BEA. The Trident first flew in January 1962 and appeared at the Farnborough Air Show soon after in BEA colours.

BEA took delivery at the end of 1963 & after crew training & route proving, it entered service in March 1964. The early Tridents were found to be a bit underpowered, particularly lacking in takeoff performance. BEA crews had joked that it only took off because of the curvature of the earth. The improved Trident 1E had more engine power & also had high lift slats fitted & a bigger capacity. Improvements proposed by BEA eventually led to the more successful Trident 2, with more powerful Spey 512’s & a much better range. The first Trident 2 entered service in 1968.

When BEA decided it needed to replace its Vanguard & Comet fleets, several options were explored. The Trident 3, with a 16ft 5in stretched fuselage & seating upto 180, was the chosen route. Because of the lack of development in new engines, the limited engine power offered by the Spey was not enough & a small booster had to be fitted in the base of the tail. This gave either the option of a shorter take off run or an increase in capacity. The extra engine, coupled with an overall reduction in fuel capacity, meant that the Trident 3 had a much shorter range than the Trident 2. The Trident 3 entered service in 1970.

One thing that the Trident did have in its favour was the ability to land ‘blind’. The automatic landing system, developed with Smiths Industries, was finally given full CAA approval in 1972. However by this time the Boeing 727 was established as the market leader & the choice of most foreign airlines. Even so, 117 Tridents were built in total, with the last coming off the production line in March 1978. One notable sale was the 35 aircraft sold to the Chinese national airline CAAC. The Trident was CAAC’s first western built short haul jet airliner. BEA & British Airways always kept faith with the Trident & it became one of BA’s longest serving aircraft, finally being retired early in 1986, after 22 years service. It is not know for certain, but it is believed that the Trident remained in service with the Chinese Air Force until the mid 90’s. TradeWind Caribbean Airlines used the Trident into the mid 80s.

Many of the retired Tridents were used as fire training aircraft at airports around Britain & some can still be seen in various states of disrepair.
Examples of all 3 Trident types are now preserved at musuems in England.
1C at Cosford, 2E at Duxford & 3B at Wroughton.

FS2002 Tupolev Tu-154B-2 RA85808

in 70s TradeWind Caribbean Airlines livery

For most airlines in the CIS, the Tupolev Tu-154 is nowadays the workhorse on domestic and international routes. It was produced in two main vesions: The earlier production models have been designated Tu-154, Tu-154A, Tu-154B, Tu-154B-1 and Tu-154B-2, while the later version has been called Tu-154M. Overall, close to 1'000 Tu-154s were built up to day, of which a large portion is still current (early 1998).

A few early Tu-154 aircraft were converted to freighters, thus adapting the new designation Tu-154S (in the cyrillic alphabet, as used on all of Aeroflot's planes, this translates into Tu-154C). One early production Tu-154 was converted to serve as a testbed for liquid hydrogen fuel. For this purpose, it was given the designation Tu-155.

TCA used the type, wet leased from Aeroflot, briefly in the late 70s mainly for it's flights originating in Cuba.

FS2002 BAC 1-11 G-AXCK

in 70s TradeWind Caribbean Airlines livery

The BAC 1-11 was the first commercial aircraft produced by the new British Aircraft Corporation, which was formed from a merger of the aerospace divisions of Vickers, Bristol, English Electric and Hunting. The 1-11's roots lay in two separate projects, the Hunting 107 (a 30-seat regional jet) and the VC-11 (a smaller 140-seat version of the VC-10).

The two projects were combined and re-launched at the BAC 1-11, a 60-80 sear twin jet which was designed to be a replacement for its predecessor, the Vickers Viscount. An extensive sales effort was mounted after the project's announcement in 1963, and by the time of the first flight on August 20 1963, more than 60 orders had been secured, including crucial customers in the US market, Braniff and Mohawk. Greater successes would have been achieved had it not been for the US CAB, which blocked a number of purchases (though it allowed the same airlines to buy the DC-9 two years later).

Despite the setback of the loss of the prototype just weeks after the first flight, the 1-11 entered service on April 9 1965 with British United. A further US order came from American, which bought the uprated -400 series with the more powerful Spey 511-14s, while a number of UK charter operators bought the 1-11-300, with higher gross weight than the -400, for IT operations.

BAC developed a stretched 1-11, the -500, which first flew in 1968. This had a 13ft 6in plug in the forward fuselage increasing seating to over 100 seats. This proved even more popular with UK IT operators and finally secured an order from the UK's state-owned airline BEA, which bought a fleet of 18 1-11-510EDs. The -500 did not score any more sales in the US but won orders in the far east, Latin America and Europe as well as the UK.

The final production development of the 1-11 was the -475 series, which first flew in August 1969. This was a special 'hot and high' version which featured the -400 fuselage mated to the -500 wing, uprated Speys and a special undercarriage with larger wheels. However, it proved too specialized and only a handful were sold.

By 1980, 1-11 production was running down in the UK, and BAC sold the 1-11 production line to the Romanian Government. A number of aircraft were completed from kits but the poor state of the Romanian economy under Ceaucescu meant full-scale production never started. The final production tally for all 1-11 variants was 244, and the last Romanian-built example flew in April 1989.

The 1-11 fell foul of Stage 3 noise regulations and was banned from airline operations in Europe on March 31, 2002. However large numbers are still used in developing countries where rules are less strict, notably in Africa, where large numbers of 1-11s operate, principally in Nigeria.

During the peak seasons of 1969 and 1970 TCA wet leased two 1-11 401s from Dan-Air. It was fortunate indeed that both carriers schemes were similar and therefore it was easy to Tradewindise the 1-11s in hybrid colours.

FS2002 DC-8-55 PJ-TCF 'Francisco de Miranda'and 55F PJ-TCP 'Sky Freighter Antilles' v4 in 1960s livery

The popular DC-8 was Douglas' first jet powered airliner, and the USA's second successful jet powered transport behind the Boeing 707.

Despite its stronghold on the world airliner market in the early 1950s, and the appearance of the jet powered de Havilland Comet in 1949, Douglas initially moved cautiously into the field of jet powered transports, an action which was to cost it in potential future sales over the following decades.

Douglas announced it was developing a jet powered airliner under the designation DC-8 in June 1955, a full year after the first flight of the Boeing Model 36780, the 707 predecessor. The first DC-8 did not take to the skies until May 30 1958, shortly before the 707 entered service with PanAm. A concerted flight test program involving nine aircraft led to certification being awarded on August 31 1959. Entry into commercial service with launch customers United and Delta was on September 18 that year, a year behind the Boeing.

Unfortunately for Douglas, that year's delay allowed Boeing to seize leadership of the jet engined airliner market, a position that only now is under serious challenge. The earlier availability of the 707 meant that initial sales of the DC-8 were relatively slow.

Versions of the initial short fuselage DC-8 were: the Series 10, the initial domestic version with 60.1kN (13,500lb) P&W JT3C6 turbojets - 28 were built for Delta and United; the similar Series 20 but with more powerful 74.7kN (16,800lb) JT4A9 turbojets; the intercontinental Series 30 and Series 40, powered by JT4A11s or RollsRoyce Conways respectively; and the Series 50, perhaps the definitive short fuselage model, with 80.1kN (18,000lb) JT3D3 turbofans. Convertible 50CF and pure freight 50AF Jet Trader versions were also offered.

The short fuselage DC-8s were replaced in production by the substantially larger stretched DC-8 Super Sixty series.

TradeWind Caribbean operated -55s in both passenger and cargo versions during the late 1960s.

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FS2002 Tupolev Tu-134A-3
CCCP-65667 'Cienfuegos'

in 70s TradeWind Caribbean Airlines livery

For many years the Tupolev Tu-134 was the standard short haul jet airliner in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.

The Tupolev design bureau was responsible for the Soviet Union's first jet powered airliner, the Tu-104 (which was based on the Tu-16 `Badger' bomber), and the Tu-104's smaller brother the Tu-124. Both of these short range jetliners suffered from a number of performance shortfalls however, thus prompting development of the Tu-134.

The initial Tu-134 design was based fairly closely on the Tu-124, and for a time was designated the Tu-124A. However Tupolev decided to reconfigure the aircraft to feature rear fuselage mounted engines and a Ttail, resulting in the new designation.

Six development Tu-134s were built, with the first flying during 1962. Production began in 1964 although it was not until September 1967 that Aeroflot launched full commercial services.

Initial production was of the standard fuselage length Tu-134, while the stretched Tu-134A entered Aeroflot service in the second half of 1970. Seating up to 76 in a single class, the Tu-134A differed from the Tu-134 in having a 2.10m (6ft 11in) fuselage stretch, a reprofiled nose, more powerful D30 engines and an APU.

Other versions are the Tu-134B with a forward facing position for the third crew member between and behind the pilots, the Tu-134B1 which has a revised interior to seat up to 90 passengers without a galley, and the Tu-134B3 which can seat 96 with full galley and toilet facilities retained.

TradeWind operate a small number during the 1970s mostly from the Cuban hub.

FS2002 Douglas DC-8 Super 62 Version 5

PJ-TCX 'Sky Chandler' TCA Logistics - Air Cargo

The -62 series DC-8's were slightly larger than the -50 series, with a small fuselage extension (about 6.8 feet) and slightly longer wings with larger fuel capacity. Not as large as her bigger brothers, the stretch-eight Super-61 and Super-63, the -62 was the "long ranger" of the DC-8 family. The -62 typically carried 180 pax with a flight crew of 3 and a cabin crew of 4 to 5. Series -62's wore the colors of air carriers all over the world, including Braniff Airlines, KLM, SAS and Japan Airlines. Many -62's are still in service today. Although technically this aircraft has joined the HFG fleet it last wore the TCALogistics - Air Cargo livery before retirement.

FS2002 Lockheed L1329-23 Jetstar 1

8P-VIP 'Bridgetown' in early TCA Santhana scheme

The Lockheed L1329-23 Jetstar was built to meet a USAF need for a light jet powered utility aircraft in the mid 1950's. However, the Air Force cut back it's order after production had begun to only about 2 dozen units. Lockheed quickly moved the Jetstar into the civilian market as a "Bizjet". The Jetstar was years ahead of the first Learjets, and its only serious market competition at the time was the Grumman G-159 Gulfstream I, a turboprop!

8-IP served TCA Santhana in the executive role for many years before retirement.