BEA Presents: Clear to Land- 1968 Trident Promo Film (Part 1 of 3)

I believe this film was produced for BEA in 1968 to showcase the autoland features of the BEA Trident aircraft, and shows many classic shots of airports and aircraft of the 1960s. It follows a Trident on a typical flight from Paris Le Bourget to London Heathrow. It also shows BEA's West London Air Terminal and their new "automated" reservations centre.

Also see http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=J-iG9Cd4IV0 for a BOAC promo film from 1963.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• BEA
• Trident
• British
• Airways
• BA
• Heathrow
• Le
• Bourget
• Autoland
• 1968
• BEACON
• west
• london
• air
• terminal

[planeboy737]

Can i ask. What was the west london air terminal for? Could you check in at heathrow?

[koksy]

It was built because there was no mass public transport system (ie the Picadilly tube line) to Heathrow at the time. The idea was that you checked in there and then got on a bus to Heathrow- there was a separate bus for each flight. It saved people having to drive all the way from central London to Heathrow on congested London roads. It was only used by BEA and you could still check in at Heathrow if you wanted to.

[FaerieCrone]

@drav1dan lol she probably started telling all the passengers where to sit

[PanAmPatrick]

How the hell do you use those reservation machines seen between 2:43 to 3:02! Anyway, this film is marvelous, explaining one of the most advanced flight avionics at the time, the autoland feature.

[spider23000]

@koksy I might be mistaken but can't you still do something similar at Paddington Station?

[dutchgoing]

@matatan69 It's a case of having something that works well & sticking to it. The smaller looking mics you might see in a NASA film would have been very very expensive, you would not have seen these in a call centre in the USA in the late 1960s.

[eeyore8544]

@stylophobia I grew up under the flight path to Heathrow too!! (Small world). Haven't been there for quite some time but our house was in Southall and backed on to the "rec" (in case you know that area). Like you, I spent many hours watching aircraft "coming home". Later, I worked for BEA and remember the Trident well - GREAT aircraft. This was a nice memory.

[matatan69]

The way british embraces obsolete technology specially ugly looking ones always amazes me, just look at the mike boom at 2:09, seems out of the flintstones compared to the more aesthetic looking mikes used in the US in those days,

[jabajabamaster]

If only modern air traveling had been something like this!!

Nowadays every airport is like a DMZ!

[drav1dan]

1:38 Margaret Tatcher when she was young!