Britten-Norman Trislander (1977)

The Trislander was a development of the Britten-Norman Islander. John Britten and Desmond Norman identified a market for a utility passenger aircraft with a minimum of complex systems that could operate from short, rough airstrips. This led to the BN-2 Islander design which first flew in 1965 and was a great success, indeed so great that Britten-Norman’s factory at Bembridge on the Isle of Wight could not keep pace and another production line was set up in Romania at IRMA, the same company that built the BAC 1-11 under license. Over 500 airframes were constructed there.

Britten-Norman then looked at the possibility of a larger version and the second Islander prototype was converted into the Trislander by stretching the fuselage and adding a third engine on top of the fin. This aircraft appeared at the Farnborough Air Show in 1970. Five doors along both sides of the fuselage allowed access to all seat rows. Alternatively, as a cargo aircraft, the cabin offered 24 feet (7.3 m) of uninterrupted freight capacity.

The Trislander prototype first flew on 11 September 1970 with deliveries commencing in June 1971 and deliveries commenced in June that year. Britten- Norman was acquired by Fairey Aviation in 1972, and many aircraft were built in the Fairey factory at Gosselies in Belgium, leading to the Trislander, with its tail-mounted third engine, being christened the ‘Belgian DC-10’! The aircraft won the Queen’s Award to Industry for Technological Innovation in 1975 but did not enjoy the same success as the Islander, and production ceased in 1980 after 82 airframes had been completed.

Following financial problems at Fairey, Britten-Norman passed through several ownerships, and at the time of writing is owned by 4D Capital Partners LLP. The Islander, however, is still in production; over 1250 aircraft have been built, making the Islander family Britain’s most successful airliners. Hundreds of Islanders and a few Trislanders are still in service worldwide.

G-BEVT is a BN-2A Mk.III-2, the “-2” designates the long nose added for more luggage space. Its first flight was on 1st July 1977 but due to a lack of orders it was not delivered until 22 July 1983, when it joined the fleet of Aurigny Air Services of Guernsey, who operated a total of 15 Trislanders. These aircraft were often used as air ambulances; the front three rows of seats were removed to take a stretcher and a single seat for an attendant.

It spent its entire career with Aurigny, mainly on services between the Channel Islands, and Southampton on the south coast of England, and amassed a total of 86,603 flights. With total hours of 28,280, the average time per flight was only 19.6 minutes! .

When Aurigny withdrew the type from service, they donated G-BEVT, their last Trislander, to the British Airliner Collection for preservation and it made its last flight from Alderney to Duxford on 21 June 2017.