Trident 3B

At a ceremony at Manchester Airport’s Aviation Viewing Park BAe Trident 3B G-AWZK was unveiled to the public on 2nd April 2007 after two years of destruction, reconstruction, and renovation.

ZK was delivered to British Airways from Hatfield on 6th October 1971 and flew the routes for them until 1st November 1985 when it was grounded for ever. For the next 20 years it performed mundane tasks such as training tractor drivers and de-icing crews.

In 2005 the authorities at Heathrow decided that it was surplus to requirements and decided to scrap it, however news of this spread and reached the ears of Neil Lomax and the Trident Preservation Society who started a campaign to save the aeroplane. One of the problems was where it could be kept, Heathrow said that they were not interested but Manchester Airport were. This, of course, raised another problem, apart from the little matter of finance, how do you get a non-flyable aircraft the size of a Trident from Heathrow to Manchester? The answer is you chop it up!

The Trident Preservation Society, British Airways and Manchester Airport Authorities got together and funded a rescue package which included cutting off the wings and fin (complete with tailplane) and taking them plus the fuselage by road to Manchester. This had all to be done against a tight time scale as Heathrow had given an end date to get the aeroplane off their patch, and had to include organising a police convoy due to the size of the loads. In spite of these problems the bits of ZW all arrived safely at the Aviation Viewing Park at Manchester Airport. All that had to be done then was to put it back together again.

Those of us who were lucky to be invited to the unveiling ceremony were able to see what a marvellous job had been done in reassembling the aircraft by a company called Simulation-SERS which had been constructing the airport’s new fire training rig. The refurbishment of the interior of the flight deck and cabin is also outstanding and it all looks brand new thanks to the hard work and expertise of the Trident Preservation Society and, in particular, Neil Lomax. It must have been two years of hard, unrelenting graft.

2nd April 2007 dawned bright and sunny when a group of people associated with ZK’s past and future gathered to witness Capt Tony Angus cut the tape at the rear door and declare the aircraft open after speeches from Neil Lomax, Tony Angus and Andrew Holl, Operations Director of Manchester Airport Having admired the pristine exterior and interior, watched a DVD showing the history of the Trident and drunk a glass of champagne ZW was left in the company of a Concorde, an RJX and a DC10 fuselage to await its new public as an example of the capabilities of the British aircraft industry in general and Hatfield in particular.