Skyways 701

A Skyways of London Avro 748 climbs out of the grass-strip airfield at Lympne for Beauvais on one of the company's low-cost Coach Air flights.

A child of many parents, the 748 started out as a design by Avro and as such first flew in 1960, however by the time it hit the market in 1962, Avro had already been absorbed into Hawker-Siddeley, so while the aircraft was still publicly known as the Avro 748, it was in fact the Hawker-Siddeley HS 748.  By the time its production was wound down in 1988, Hawker-Siddeley had itself been absorbed into the British Aerospace group - so theoretically the design was known as the BAe HS 748 by then.  As if that wasn't enough, some 95 were built under licence by Hindustan Aeronautics in India, these becoming known as the HAL-748.

But I digress.  The Avro 748 was one of many aircraft designed to become the utopia of aviation - a veritable Dakota replacement.  It was one of many such designs (ATL Accountant, Handley-Page Herald, Handley-Page Dart Herald, Convair CV-240/340/440/540/580/600/640, Saab 90 Scandia and Fokker F-27 to name some), however unlike some of these designs, it tried to emulate the venerable DC-3s capabilities such as short-field performance.  As such, it managed to get things right, and managed to carve out a sizable chunk of a market dominated by the Fokker F-27 Friendship.

With Skyways of London, the Avro/Hawker-Siddeley 748 started its airline career in April 1962, operating out of the (since long closed) Lympne airfield, one of the few airfields at the time which still used a grass landing strip for its airliner operations.  54 years after the type's first flight, and 52 years after its introduction into service, a dozen or two 748s remain in airline service.

Flight Simulator 9/FS2004ACOF by and (c) Microsoft

Avro 748/Hawker Siddeley HS748 for FS9 by Rick Piper

Skyways of London/Coach Air repaint by Garry Russell