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Hawker SiddeleyAirlinerRetired

Hawker Siddeley Trident family

The Trident story, from first flight to lasting reputation

The British trijet built around short-field performance, autopilot sophistication, and airline requirements that later grew beyond it.

Hawker Siddeley Trident family is a retired airliner by Hawker Siddeley, first flown in 1962 and introduced in 1964. This canonical Airchive page keeps the family history, specs, variants, operators, and related archive discussion at a single permanent URL.

First flight

1962

Service entry

1964

Seating band

101 to 180

Hawker Siddeley Trident family is a retired airliner by Hawker Siddeley, first flown in 1962 and introduced in 1964, with typical seating for 101 to 180 and range up to 2,400 nautical miles.

The family page acts as the primary unit of record so airline deployment, cabin experience, production history, and representative variants remain legible instead of fragmenting into model-number sprawl.

Range band

2,400 nm

Notable operators

BEA · CAAC · British Airways

Source stack

  • Manufacturer heritage material
  • type certificate and planning data
  • museum and preservation references

Variants

Representative variants

Manufacturer pageForum hubCompare families

Variant

Trident 3B

Trident 3B is the representative branch of the Hawker Siddeley Trident family, capturing the stretched final branch created to answer the family’s seat-count limits.

Range 2,100 nm · Entry 1971

Specifications

Current public facts

Manufacturer
Hawker Siddeley
Program history
Class
Airliner
Airchive taxonomy
First flight
1962-01-09
Program history
Service entry
1964-04-01
Operator records
Current status
Retired
Fleet reality
Typical seating
101 to 180
Operator and cabin references
Range band
Up to 2,400 nm
Program literature
Cruise speed
520 kt
Planning data

Archive moments

Human context

The Trident remains an enthusiast’s airliner: technically fascinating, visually compact for a trijet, and forever part of British and Chinese jet-age memory.
Passenger memory matters here because airport routine, cabin atmosphere, and route geography are part of the aircraft story rather than side notes.

Timeline

Program milestones

  1. 1962

    First flight

    The Trident begins flight testing and establishes the public shape of the family.

  2. 1964

    Service entry

    The family enters passenger or executive service and begins building its operating footprint.

  3. Today

    Current role

    The family remains active in service and still shapes fleet, mission, or archive discussions.

Related news

Editorial context

All news
No editorial dispatches are attached to this family yet. The aircraft record is live, and newsroom or archive coverage can be layered onto it later without changing the URL.

Forum threads

Community memory

Family hub