Avro series unsafe?
 

I am flying an Avro today for the first time, and i'm a little nervous. I have heard that they don't have a good safety rep, and there have been a number of CFIT accidents?

Are these machines safe?

You mean the Avro RJ100 or BAe 146? Those are great planes. If one engine dies, there are 3 left. I used to love the Mesaba/Northwest Airlink Avros.

Loved the Avros that NW had. They were sold to a carrier in Europe - forget who. Never heard of any safety problems, and if there were, they would not be flying.

I suspect flying into the ground has more to do with the types of route & airports the planes use, not that they are inherently unsafe

Yes, they are also known to have spectacularly soft landings.

Cityjet ;)

If you are the Prince of Wales I would advise you to give it a miss

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/pr...h-1592247.html

otherwise you will be OK :)

Long ago, I had a hop in a WWII surplus (but well maintained) Avro Anson. It was too slow to be very dangerous. The mere thought that the RAF had once emplyed Ansons for ASW patrols in the Coastal Command was shocking. I think it was slower than most submarines (at least into the wind).

Well, by definition, if it is CFIT there is nothing wrong with the aircraft at all, only with whoever is handling it.

They are still the majority type into London City, a nice challenging approach, and are fine here. My favourite type actually.

I regret (not really) to report that Mr WHBM Senior :) , long ago and far away, did a loop-the-loop in an Anson ^ , so they can't have been that slow. Probably in 1943. Never told anybody, and they did it well above the clouds and out of sight, went over quite nicely apparently.

It's the landing gear design off the old Comet (same design team, or their successors, and initially from the same factory).

The whole lot were sold, in one transaction, to Cityjet, the carrier who are the largest at London City airport, and operate from there across Europe. They got new leather seats - were the seats 5-across or 6-across with Northwest ?

The Avros / 146s are terrific. We miss them here in the US. Northwest Airlink had a little flock of them that flew MSP-ORD, etc. and I always looked forward to flying them. A short-lived LCC based at IAH, Presidential Airways, also made great use of them up and down the east coast.

Swiss Int'l Air flies the RJ100's for their short trips in Europe. I flew on them several times this year and absolutely loved the ride. A small 90+ seater airplane with 4 jet engines.

IIRC NW/XJ had to configure them very spaciously due to scope clause constraints.

I shudder (and certainly the Anson's airframe shuddered) at the thought. Only possible scenario involves substantial "downhill" entry to build up airspeed prior to the attempt, then a straining, groaning climb toward an apex where (a) airspeed would have certainly dropped to near zero, raising likelihood of simply falling from the sky inverted, and (b) much unsecured gear and a variety of unnecessary parts and components would have littered the overhead. Then there was recovery, probably easier, but no less thrilling. In retrospect, an Immelman might have been a equally colorful yet less perilous alternative. I suspect that the Anson's airframe was strong enough to keep the wingspars conjoined, and your Dad was flying in an era in which aviators, in their own eyes avatars, routinely attempted maneuvers which designers had not intended a/c to undertake. Many were successful, but then, the exposure risk to other perils was pretty high.

Let us never forget the acts, deeds and sacrifice of the men (and even some women) who flew then. When I think of aviators, I always recall an older cousin, a petite greying blond, barely 100 lbs, who ferried C-47s to the Scuppered Aisles. Long after the war, she used to claim that a combination of ineffective cockpit heat and sitting on a packed parachute to see ahead aggravated her arthritis which sadly limited her getting around late in life. They offered to let her go home after her brother was lost piloting a B-17 over Germany. Apparently, she claimed to keeping on keeping on was the preferred alternative.

correct. Believe they started aroung 10,000 feetapparently it just went over easier than they even expected. All tied down. This had been thought about in detail in the bar for days ! Just nose down from the 270 degree mark until the airspeed built up again. Well certainly on their trips to Europe in their Halifax 4-engined bombers (main aircraft of the squadron, the Anson was just a trainer and hack) they had seen these forced by fighters into barrel rolls and other extreme attitudes, this time without any advanced planning, from which the crew returned to tell the tale.

Incidentally, Pater was a navigator. The whole madcap plan was "the other chap's idea". Of course ! They had parachutes on and had agreed a story between them (that the controls had jammed) if they had to bale out.

[QUOTE=WHBM;14923839]correct. ...... Well certainly on their trips to Europe in their Halifax 4-engined bombers (main aircraft of the squadron, the Anson was just a trainer and hack) they had seen these forced by fighters into barrel rolls and other extreme attitudes, this time without any advanced planning, from which the crew returned to tell the tale.[QUOTE]

IIRC, the RAF Bomber Command had the highest casualty rate among the various British service commands, a solemn comment on the occasional need for violent untested maneuvers when faced by desperate situations.

Since this thread was about Avro, the company did build the more numerous and preferable alternative to the Halifax, the Lancaster. I did have an operational hop nearly half century ago on the maritime patrol successor to that bird, the Shackleton, a long-lived a/c, operationally flying in SAfrican colors into the 80s. When I was serving with the US 6th Fleet, '62-'65, the RAF was still flying Shackletions out of Malta, while the USN based its ASW P2H Neptunes and Electronic Warfare "Willie Victors" - WV2 military versions of the TATL Super Constellation at Sigonella in Sicily in the shadows of Mt. Aetna.

Airliners seem to be natural candidates for various long range military uses. The P3 Orion in US service (ASW, EW, Weather, Border Security, fire-fighting) for more than 40 years is based on a redesign of the Lockheed Electra. The RAF's Nimrod is every bit the child of the first DH Comet. Now, Boeing is hard at work on a 737 redesign to replace the P3 Orions in US and many foreign services.

If thats the case then maybe you forgive me reminiscing about the late 80's when as a youngster I used to see plenty of BA HS748's flying low over my house on approach MAN. Always used to pick them out them as the only other props into MAN at that time (to my knowledge) were the visually dissimillar SD330's and 360's.

At that young age I used to think that props where somehow special, mainly perhaps because the flew lower and therefore more visible from my house.