Originally Posted by
WHBM
5. What color would Braniff’s second 747 have been? What happened to it?
Braniff's second 747 has some doubt about whether it was actually painted up green or not before it was cancelled (bearing in mind that Boeing's primer paint is green anyway). It would have been N602BN, and because Braniff some years later did buy another new 747, used this registration again, and this time painted it orange, they get confused.
The original aircraft sat for more than two years unwanted until Canadian charter operator Wardair took it in spring 1973, and used it on their various routes, generally Canada to Europe in the summer and down to the Caribbean and Hawaii in the winter. This is how I came to be on it in summer 1981, operating Manchester-Prestwick-Toronto, prior to picking up an AutoDriveaway car (remember those ?) and driving to Vancouver. Anyway, enough of me. Wardair sold it on to Nationair, another Canadian charter company, in 1989, and some years later it came to Air Atlanta, an Iceland-based charter company which actually operated mainly out of London Gatwick, and were Europe's bottom-feeding equivalent of Tower Air. It ended up at an obscure UK airport called Manston, which is where many 747s seem to go to die, as happened here, it being scrapped around the Millennium. I used to drive down to Dover, which is near there, and sometimes went around the airfield perimeter to see what old aircraft were in there, and in 1999 there it was, an old friend. I don't think it was ever fitted out with any premium class seats.
Many thanks to WHBM for this totally First Class answer. ^ I had read somewhere that the only BN 747 to wear the dark green livery was a 1/100 scale desk model.