@Rikki Gins posted a picture of a postcard of a Vickers Viscount the other day.
The Wikipedia page for the Viscount indicated that the last one left service in 2009 with GTRA Airways in the Congo. So I thought I'd poke around and see what I could find on
Vickers Viscount 9Q-COD. It was delivered to British European Airways on July 25th, 1957 and stayed in service with that airline until 1973 when a merger moved it to British Airways.
British Airways would keep it in service until January 16, 1981 where it would then bounce around between British Air Ferries, Oasis Oil, Esso Standard Oil, Polar Airways, Euroair Transport, Airwing 2000
and British World Airlines until the end of the millennium.
From there it would head to Africa with stops at airlines in Togo, South Africa, the Ivory Coast and Benin before finally being acquired by GTRA Airways in the Democratic Republic of Congo on June 15th, 2004. It would stay in service in up until 2009. It was then apparently offered up for sale for $250,000. Without any takers the aircraft was left out in the elements in Kinshasa.
With 50,631 total landings behind it there would be no more.
In 2012, an enthusiast from viscountvickers.net (there's a dot net for *everything*) traveled to the Congo to look at the possibility of saving the aircraft. By then it was in bad shape and it
was determined to be not worth the effort and expense to save it. In 2015 the aircraft disappeared off Google Earth and was apparently scrapped.
visitors can't see pics , please
register or
loginHere is the complete history of this plane ->
http://www.vickersviscount.net/Index/VickersViscount170History.aspx
