AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 57 / 59

Plate 57 of 59 · Cold War · Commuter airliner

British Aerospace Jetstream 31

Jetstream 31, painted as G-JSSD, the Jetstream 31 prototype, built by Handley Page at Radlett in 1969 as the Jetstream 1 G-AXJZ and rebuilt by British Aerospace at Prestwick with Garrett TPE331 turboprops to fly as the first Jetstream 31 on 28 March 1980: white fuselage with a dark blue radome and pinstripe, a light blue cheat band beneath the seven round cabin windows, a dark blue crescent behind the wing and the rear fuselage, fin and rudder in light blue, black ‘G-JSSD’ below the tailplane, ‘British Aerospace Scottish Division’ titles behind the cockpit, black de-icer boots and four-blade propellers with white tips, as it is displayed in the civil aviation hangar of the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-JSSD, the Jetstream 31 prototype, built by Handley Page at Radlett in 1969 as the Jetstream 1 G-AXJZ and rebuilt by British Aerospace at Prestwick with Garrett TPE331 turboprops to fly as the first Jetstream 31 on 28 March 1980: white fuselage with a dark blue radome and pinstripe, a light blue cheat band beneath the seven round cabin windows, a dark blue crescent behind the wing and the rear fuselage, fin and rudder in light blue, black ‘G-JSSD’ below the tailplane, ‘British Aerospace Scottish Division’ titles behind the cockpit, black de-icer boots and four-blade propellers with white tips, as it is displayed in the civil aviation hangar of the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.4 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Jetstream 31 modelled here.

History

The Jetstream 31

The Jetstream was Handley Page’s last design and the one that sank the firm. The HP.137 was a small pressurised turboprop with eighteen seats, aimed at the American commuter airlines, and it first flew from Radlett on 18 August 1967 on two Turbomeca Astazou engines. The engines were late and underpowered, an order from the United States Air Force was cancelled, and the development bill overwhelmed a company that had built the Halifax and the Victor. Handley Page went into liquidation in 1969 and closed in 1970 with about forty Jetstreams finished.

Scottish Aviation at Prestwick took the design on, completed the unfinished airframes and built the Jetstream 200, including twenty-six Jetstream T.1 navigation and multi-engine trainers for the RAF and observer trainers for the Royal Navy. After Scottish Aviation was merged into British Aerospace in 1977 the Prestwick works gave the aircraft the engines it had always needed: two Garrett TPE331 turboprops with four-blade propellers. The prototype Jetstream 31, rebuilt from a 1969 Jetstream 1, first flew on 28 March 1980 and the type was certificated in 1982.

The Jetstream 31 and the more powerful Super 31 sold to commuter and regional airlines across the United States and Europe, and 386 were built before production ended in 1993; in Britain they flew for Loganair, Manx Airlines, British Regional and Eastern Airways among others. A stretched twenty-nine-seat Jetstream 41 followed in 1991, with a hundred built by 1997, when Prestwick stopped making complete aircraft. The RAF’s Jetstream T.1s trained pilots at Finningley and Cranwell until 2004 and the Navy’s Jetstream T.2s at Culdrose until 2011; a few Jetstream 31s still earn their keep on air-taxi and survey work.

This airframe

Jetstream 31 G-JSSD

G-JSSDThe airframe modelled

G-JSSD was built by Handley Page at Radlett in 1969 as Jetstream 1 G-AXJZ and sold at once to the United States. British Aerospace bought it back in 1979 and rebuilt it at Prestwick as the Jetstream 31 prototype, with Garrett TPE331-10 turboprops and four-blade propellers in place of the Astazous; it first flew in that form on 28 March 1980, appeared at Farnborough in 1980 and 1982 and served as the company demonstrator until about 1990, then was stored at Prestwick before joining the Scottish national collection. The model shows it as it stands in the civil aviation hangar of the National Museum of Flight at East Fortune, in its British Aerospace Scottish Division demonstrator colours: white fuselage with a dark blue radome and pinstripe, a light blue cheat band beneath the seven round cabin windows, a dark blue crescent behind the wing, the rear fuselage, fin and rudder in light blue, black “G-JSSD” below the tailplane, black de-icer boots on the wing and tail leading edges, and black spinners and propeller blades with white tips.

See it at National Museum Of Flight

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Jetstream 31 in 4 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 59 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.