AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 48 / 59

Plate 48 of 59 · Cold War · Long-range airliner

Vickers VC10

Standard VC10, painted as G-ASIX, a Standard VC10 Type 1103 built for British United Airways and first flown at Weybridge on 17 October 1964, flown by British Caledonian from 1970 and from 1974 by the Sultan of Oman’s Royal Flight as A4O-AB, in which marks it made the last civil VC10 flight when it landed at Brooklands on 6 July 1987: all-over white with a green-over-red cheatline beneath the cabin windows that sweeps down and round the radome, the same stripes along each pair of Conway nacelles, the flag of Oman on the fin, a red-and-green crest behind the cockpit side windows, ‘A4O-AB’ in black on the rear fuselage and red blanks in the intakes and jet pipes, as it is displayed at Brooklands Museum, Weybridge.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-ASIX, a Standard VC10 Type 1103 built for British United Airways and first flown at Weybridge on 17 October 1964, flown by British Caledonian from 1970 and from 1974 by the Sultan of Oman’s Royal Flight as A4O-AB, in which marks it made the last civil VC10 flight when it landed at Brooklands on 6 July 1987: all-over white with a green-over-red cheatline beneath the cabin windows that sweeps down and round the radome, the same stripes along each pair of Conway nacelles, the flag of Oman on the fin, a red-and-green crest behind the cockpit side windows, ‘A4O-AB’ in black on the rear fuselage and red blanks in the intakes and jet pipes, as it is displayed at Brooklands Museum, Weybridge. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.5 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (+ Super VC10); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Standard VC10 modelled here.

History

The VC10

The VC10 was built to a BOAC requirement of 1957 for a jet that could fly the Empire routes: the hot, high and short runways of Africa and the Far East, where the Boeing 707 could not lift a full load. Vickers answered with a clean, highly efficient wing with full-span slats and big flaps, and hung all four Rolls-Royce Conway turbofans in pairs on the rear fuselage, which left the wing uncluttered and gave the cabin a quietness passengers never forgot. The prototype, G-ARTA, first flew from the short runway at Brooklands on 29 June 1962, and BOAC put the type into service to Lagos in April 1964.

A Super VC10, stretched by thirteen feet with more powerful Conways and a fin fuel tank, followed in 1964 and became the airline’s Atlantic flagship. The VC10 was faster than the 707 and climbed out of Nairobi and Kano with ease, but it was more expensive to fly, and BOAC, which had wanted the aircraft, cut its Super VC10 order from thirty to seventeen and argued in public that it was being made to buy an uneconomic British aeroplane. Just fifty-four were built, against more than a thousand 707s: twelve Standard VC10s for BOAC, two for Ghana Airways, three for British United, fourteen for the RAF, seventeen Supers for BOAC and five for East African Airways.

British Airways flew its last VC10 service in 1981, by when the RAF had become the type’s great user. Fourteen VC10 C.1 transports joined No. 10 Squadron at Brize Norton from 1966, and from 1984 ex-airline airframes were rebuilt as K.2, K.3 and K.4 tankers for No. 101 Squadron, with the transports later fitted with hose-drum units as C.1Ks. The tankers refuelled fighters over the Falklands, the Gulf, the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and the last of them was retired in September 2013. A Super VC10 still holds the record for the fastest Atlantic crossing by a subsonic airliner: New York to London in five hours and one minute, in 1979.

This airframe

VC10 Type 1103 G-ASIX

G-ASIXThe airframe modelled

G-ASIX was the second of three Type 1103 VC10s built for British United Airways, with a main-deck cargo door in the forward fuselage and a lengthened leading edge over the inner wing; it first flew at Weybridge on 17 October 1964 and flew BUA’s South American and West African routes before passing to British Caledonian in 1970. In 1974 it was sold to the Government of Oman and became A4O-AB of the Sultan of Oman’s Royal Flight, with a VIP cabin, and in that service it carried Sultan Qaboos for thirteen years. Brooklands Museum was given the aircraft in 1987 and it was flown onto the old Brooklands runway, beside the works that had built it, on 6 July that year: the last civil VC10 flight. The model shows it as it stands at Brooklands today: all-over white with a green-over-red cheatline beneath the cabin windows that sweeps down and round the radome, the same stripes along each pair of Conway nacelles, the flag of Oman on the fin, a red-and-green crest behind the cockpit side windows, the registration “A4O-AB” in black on the rear fuselage, reapplied in 2023, and red blanks in the intakes and jet pipes.

See it at Brooklands Museum

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the VC10 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.