
January 1972 to February 1975
British Midland Airways (BMA)
G-AZLR - c/n 347 - a V.813 series Viscount
United Kingdom registered
November 1971
BMA Managing Director Michael Bishop discovered that the SAA Viscount fleet was for sale by reading an advertisement in a Flight International weekly magazine during a business trip to Tel Aviv, Israel.
He quickly travelled to Johannesburg with the intention of buying two of the aircraft but was dismayed to find out that SAA were only interested in selling the complete fleet of seven aircraft together with a spares package.
Mike discussed this situation with SAA and made an offer of £98,000 for the aircraft and £37,000 for the spares package.
To his surprise this offer was accepted. He subsequently purchased their Viscount simulator for a further £5,000.
December 1971
Chief Buyer George Morrell, Chief Inspector Tony Topps and Planning Manager Mike Baker travelled out to Johannesburg together with Air Registration Board representative Ray Atwood to finalise things and review the fleet.
4 January 1972
Registered to British Midland Airways (BMA).
7 January 1972
Rolled out at Jan Smuts International Airport, Johannesburg, South Africa with the British registration applied to the basic South African Airways (SAA) livery minus titles and fin logo.
18 January 1972
Departed from Jan Smuts International Airport, Johannesburg, South Africa on delivery to the UK in company with sister Viscount G-AZLP (C/N 346) (ex SAA ZS-CDT).
Both aircraft stopped at Blantyre, Malawi - Nairobi, Kenya - Khartoum, Sudan - Cairo, Egypt - Benina (Benghazi), Libya - Nice, France en route.
The aircraft was flown by BMA Captain Stevens.
20 January 1972
Arrived at East Midlands Airport, Castle Donington, Leicestershire, England.
6 October 1972
Noted at East Midlands Airport, Castle Donington, Leicestershire, England undergoing lower spar boom replacement work with BMA.
Elmdon, Birmingham, West Midlands, England
19 January 1973
Suffered a landing accident at Birmingham International Airport, Elmdon, West Midlands, England during a positioning flight from Leeds / Bradford Airport, Yeadon, Yorkshire, England.
As the aircraft touched down the port main undercarriage collapsed and the aircraft skidded along the runway and slewed off to the left, onto the grass. The tail of the aircraft was close to the runway which prevented other aircraft from using it. There was no post-crash fire.
Fortunately there were no passengers on board and the two pilots plus a positioning Captain were all unhurt.
After an extensive investigation it was determined that the port undercarriage leg was not properly locked down, which showed up in the cockpit but no blame was attached to the crew as they had noted the unsafe cockpit light and checked the port wing indicator before they landed which showed that it was in the 'safe' position. The mechanical indicator on the port wing had frozen solid overnight at Leeds and broke when the undercarriage was retracted, thus giving false information to the crew.
The aircraft returned to service after repairs, which took approximately two weeks including replacing the two shockloaded Dart engines.
2 February 1975
Leased to Cyprus Airways.
|