Trident
The Hawker Siddeley Trident was the first commercial airliner to be fitted with a fully automatic landing system enabling aircraft to land in poor visibility or bad weather when it would be difficult for a human pilot,
The auto landing system was developed by Smiths Industries (now GE), based in Cheltenham, so the Trident forward fuselage section has a rightful place at the Jet Age Museum which is all about aviation in North Gloucestershire (Smiths, Gloster Aircraft Company, Dowty Rotol, Whittle jet development with GAC etc.).
I haven't been to the museum for a while and was very impressed with the changes and progress made, particularly with the Trident exhibition but also some other changes even in the cafe area and Vulcan.
The Trident was in a really awful state when it was brought to the museum as it had been in storage for years. It's really worth a visit now and I've put an extra photo or two so you can see what it looks now.
Thinks "Why do they call them black boxes when the flight recorders are actually bright orange/dayglo"?
This one is G-AWZU
G-AWZU first flew in June 1972, was delivered to BEA in October 1972 and continued its service life with BEA, and latterly BA after their merger in 1974, until 31 December 1985 when it landed at LHR completing its final revenue service flight.
Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.