BAC One-Eleven

British Aircraft Corporation · United Kingdom · first flew 1963 · airliner

The BAC One-Eleven was a successful British short-haul twinjet with two rear-fuselage engines and a T-tail, pioneering the two-crew jet flight deck.

Recognition (WEFT)

W — WingsLow-mounted, swept
E — Engines2 × turbofan, fuselage-mounted
F — FuselageSmall twinjet with rear-fuselage engines
T — TailT-tail

WEFT is AircraftIQ's four-point recognition method — how it works.

Spot it by:

Identify it as a small-to-medium twinjet with both engines on the rear fuselage beneath a T-tail and a clean swept wing, with a short, stubby profile that resembles a scaled-down DC-9.

Specifications

Figures are for the representative variant described above; marks differ. See how AircraftIQ sources figures.

History

The prototype first flew in 1963 but was lost in a deep-stall accident that year, a key event in understanding the T-tail rear-engine deep-stall hazard and leading to standard stick-shaker and stick-pusher systems. The stretched Series 500 first flew in 1967, and the type sold well across Europe and beyond.

Variants

The family ran through the original Series 200 and 300, the Series 400 for the US market, the stretched Series 500 and the hot-and-high short-field Series 475, powered throughout by Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans.

Where you'll see it

British United Airways flew the first revenue service from Gatwick in 1965, BEA and British Airways operated Trident-commonality 510ED models, and British Caledonian was a major user from Gatwick until its 1987 merger into BA, which retired its fleet by 1992. Examples are preserved at Brooklands, Duxford and the National Museum of Flight, East Fortune.

Related aircraft

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