Boeing 747

Seen at T5 LHR recently

1919-2019 anniversary livery

I saw a picture in flight in the early nineties of a BA747 with BOAC one one of its engines. Obviously a replacement engine that somehow hadnt been repainted.

So BA is scrapping all its 747s and Boeing is stopping production, a sad day.

Some models of the 747 had the capability to carry a fifth engine on a stub pylon mounted between the fuselage and the Number 2 engine. Used to carry a serviceable engine between way stations (or recover a bad one) to service a grounded aircraft.

I wonder if an Airfix 747 kit would be an investment?

Only if flying ants take up long range travel

In BOAC/BA service the B747-100 (Pratt & Whitney engined) and the B747-200 (Rolls Royce powered) had provision for a 5th pod. In the early days (1970's) of the B747-100 engine changes down route were quite frequent, so that it got to the stage where BOAC pre-positioned spare engines at some route stations. A 5th pod was used to move both serviceable and unserviceable engines (for repair back at Treforest in South Wales). The 5th pod was a bit of a challenge for flight planning purposes and affected aircraft fuel consumption, altitude, speed and range.

Early 70s, I took off as a passenger from Bahrain to Bangkok on a BA night flight 747. On climb-out from my window seat I saw vapour or smoke streaming back from the top of the No 2 engine cowling and alerted a stewardess who told me it was condensation and seen frequently! Sixty seconds later with climbing power stiil on there was a loud bang and pieces of engine pod rattled back over the wing. The Captain made an announcement that were were turning back to Bahrein which he did and landed without incident.

As we deplaned I walked round to look at the engine (although the cabin crew tried to stop me) and could see that the the engine compressor had disintegrated.

Back in the terminal there was chaos since some 280 pax, some had come from London, had to be reflighted or hotelled. To cut a long story short, the BA Station Manager told me they had no spare planes and would have to change out the engine on our plane but there was no spare available at the Bahrain station. I made a call to a contact and he confirmed that they (his airline) had a compatible spare positioned at Bahrain and that they had an inter-airline agreement to share on request. I took that back to the BA Station Manager who refuted it.

Bottom line. We spent 72 hours in the terminal eating BA snack meals and floor sleeping whilst a spare ECU came downline on another BA aircraft and was removed. That caused a 12 hour delay in Bahrain for those passengers. The serviceable engine was then mounted on our plane and tested and eventually we took off three days late. But it gets worse. There was an in-flight problem with the Number 3 which had to be shut down and we diverted to Bombay were we were deplaned and hotelled, but that's another story.

I newer flew BA again.

Being pedantic if that was the early 70s then it was probably BOAC you flew with!