With proposals for a double-deck VC10, the British Aircraft Corporation was some way ahead of its time. Bruce Hales-Dutton details the incredible plan
Would the much-loved, if little-sold, VC10 have been twice as popular if its capacity had been doubled? That was the question British Aircraft Corporation engineers were asking themselves half a century ago as they sought ways of competing with the enlarged versions of American jets that were then being envisaged.
The cover of BAC’s March 1965 study of different double-deck VC10 configurations, showing the various arrangements of the RB178 engines.
The favoured solution was to create a double-decker by effectively placing one VC10 fuselage on top of another. Such an aircraft could have been in service with the British Overseas Airways Corporation in the late 1960s or early ’70s.
