WHBM

I wrote here a while ago about how, as a small child in south-west England at the end of the 1950s, I would hear late evenings from my bedroom in the far distance the rumble of large propeller aircraft, which I later determined were Constellations etc headed from Paris to Shannon and points west. Well, just early this morning was a reprise. At about 2 am I was woken by a distant but distinct heavy prop aircraft noise, so I just had to come downstairs and look at FR24, and there in otherwise deserted airspace was shown a 4-engined, Belarus-registered, Antonov 12 rumbling and resonating directly overhead London City, north-eastwards at 20,000 feet, it seems it had started from somewhere in Spain and was heading back through the night towards the Baltic and maybe eastwards to home in Minsk. Shame it was cloudy, I would have liked to have seen its lights. Whether Mrs WHBM would have approved of me going barefoot into the back garden in the middle of the night is a different matter !

Can I have a shot at this one.

Air Canada, Alia and Delta are already accounted for. I'll add BWIA as a fourth, coming from various Caribbean points.

I believe BA was operating them, although quite possible they were just shown in OAG as an L10, so that might actually make 7. BA had a poor history with the -500. They originally bought a fleet around 1980, then found they had no real use for them so after just a few years they were sold to the RAF. No sooner was that done than they started services to South America in a route swap arranged by the UK government to try and avoid British Caledonian's bankruptcy, which the -500s would have been ideal for, so BA leased the two aircraft which Sri Lankan carrier Air Lanka had recently supplemented their standard Tristar fleet with. What aircraft is shown on the BA nonstop service from London to Rio/Sao Paolo ? If it's a Tristar that would be beyond all except the -500. The ones sold to the RAF were to replace their VC-10s - which in the event ran on together and the VC-10s lasted well over a further 25 years in service

Remaining two are a bit of a challenge. TAP of Portugal were regulars with them into Heathrow on odd flights, whether shown as such in the timetable or not. Alia had too many of them, and regularly operated Sudan Airways services to Europe with one, which might be timetabled as such. Finally, I don't know whether the OAG regarded RAF Brize Norton as a London airport. It's about 60 miles west, and is base for the quite well known RAF-operated public service from the UK to the Falklands, run at the time with those ex-BA aircraft (nowadays the service still runs from here but with chartered commercial aircraft).

I'll finally add (not one of the 6) that German charter operator LTU had a couple, used pretty constantly on holiday flights from Dusseldorf to the Caribbean, which if you craned your neck on a clear day and had a good pair of binoculars you could see transiting overhead London regularly. There weren't a lot of -500 operators, but goodness, you could see most of them here.