Talk:Handley Page Dart Herald

Page Move
Just noticed this article has been moved from Handley Page Dart Herald, as Dart Herald is the proper name we should move it back! The Herald was the HPR.3 not the same aircraft. Was their consensus for the move? MilborneOne 19:47, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Would someone care to move this article back to its proper type name? Otherwise the article will be misleading as the writer above correctly observes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.30.217.224 (talk) 03:29, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * What is the source for "Dart Harald" being the correct name? I've checked six of my print sources (including Jane's 1989 edition Aviation Encyclopedia, and only one even uses the name in its text, but not the article heading of the source. As far as I can tell, the correct names are HPR.3 Herald and "HPR.7 Herald". Since both variants are discussed in this article, Handley Page Herald seems totally appropriate. - BillCJ (talk) 17:05, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Only the first two prototypes were originally Heralds all the other 50 were Dart Heralds and the two Heralds were also converted into Dart Heralds, refer UK Civil aviation authority for one, AJ Jackson's British Civil Aircraft Vol 2 since 1919 page 257 Handley Page H.P.R.7 Dart Herald I am sure I could find more. So in the end it is official name versus common name and over time most people (including Handley Page!) just used Herald. MilborneOne (talk) 18:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

last ever passenger flight?
Article states: The Herald's last ever passenger flight was operated by British Air Ferries in 1987 doing subcharters for Ryanair. This must be incorrect as I flew in one operated by Air UK from Guernsey to Eastleigh in 1988... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.177.103.238 (talk) 00:25, 3 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Air UK disposed of nearly all of their Heralds in 1984 but one (G-BEYK) was not sold until July 1988. Have you any more info on the flight (date, scheduled or chartered etc). We would still need some reliable source that indicates that Air UK's only Herald was still doing passenger flights in 1988. MilborneOne (talk) 19:47, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

I wrote the original unsigned comment above

The date would have been Sunday 11th September 1988.

My wife and I flew out of Eastleigh to Guernsey on Sunday 4th September 1988 (mid afternoon-ish) on a BAe 146 (Air UK) and returned on the Herald a week later, the flight leaving Guernsey around 1pm. The flight was an "Air UK" flight and I'm guessing it was scheduled as we booked the flight and accommodation independently (and we had to collect our flight tickets from the Air UK desk at Eastleigh). The colours of the Herald were the same as G-ASKK pictured in the main article.

Am 100% confident of the date(s) as the trip to Guernsey was for our honeymoon but unfortunately have no hard evidence to back this up. Byatis (talk) 13:05, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Just a though are you sure it wasnt a Air UK Fokker F27 they operated the Southampton-Guernsey service from about 1987 and were in the early days in the same colour scheme as seen in G-ASKK image ? MilborneOne (talk) 20:50, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * OMG! Er... um... yes... could be completely mistaken (having just compared this with this... rear entry door, cargo hold door, window shape and numbers, tail fin, Dart engines, both with a distinctive albeit different cockpit...). So what you're suggesting is that for the last 20 years I've believed that I flew in a Herald (and consequently tried to re-write Air UK's history) when in actual fact I was in a completely different aircraft. I tip my hat to you MilbourneOne. Byatis (talk) 03:20, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

OR tag/Purple Prose
The paragraphs associated with the failure of Handley Page are uncited and have little to do with the Herald - Handley Page went under over 18 months AFTER the last Herald was built. In addition, much of the text is full of uncited, glowing adulation of the Herald - after all, if it was so wonderful, why did they only sell 50 of them. The non-relevant discussion and the purple praise really needs to be trimmed back and limited to what can be properly be cited.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:08, 9 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Agree. If I open a page on an aircraft called the Herald (or the Dart Herald: this is a second order debate) I want to hear about that aircraft. The history of the decline of Handley Page, of the British aircraft industry, of British industry ... is very important, especially today; but this is not the place for it.  A few links to that history will do here. Likewise the HP history pre-Herald (Victor, and much further back and more significantly slots etc) is important in a history of aviation but marginal here. There are a lot of uncited judgemental comments lacking sources even about the aircraft, as Nigel Ish says; and some cited sources are not reliable: whoever trusted the the Daily Telegraph with judgements on airmanship (or much else)?  The article needs serious surgery.TSRL (talk) 22:02, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * In the late 1950s early 1960s the British governments had tried to pressure all the UK aviation companies to merge, as they felt there were too many aircraft companies for them to deal with. Fred Handley Page wasn't used to being ordered around and refused, and as a result his firm got no more orders from the RAF and the state owned airlines, BOAC, and BEA, when certain political parties were in power. The lack of support eventually caused HP to go under, the Jetstream IIRC being the last HP aeroplane. Like a lot of British industrial woes, it was a combination of incompetent political handling and meddling civil servants that really did for HP - unlike other industries the unions were relatively blameless. Fred HP was pretty bitter about the whole thing as it was in many ways aimed against him personally.


 * The companies that DID merge became BAC and Hawker Siddeley.


 * Handley Page was in effect, deliberately put out of business by the government of the day. He upset certain people and they eventually broke him. Rather pathetic really, but it does illustrate the sort of people that had power back then. And if you're wondering what killed the UK aviation industry you don't have to look much further back than the politics of the 1960s and later. You can't design, make, and sell aeroplanes (or anything) when you have idiots in government and the civil service meddling all the time. They just mess you about as their whims take them, eventually leaving you in the shit. Then they go off and do the same to someone else. That's why it's termed "The Gravy Train" - as they get fed no matter what they get wrong, whereas other people have to suffer for their own mistakes.


 * In many ways having business dealings with a post-war British government is best planned as if one was making a deal with a spoilt, spiteful child, with all the chopping and changing of minds that usually entails. You certainly don't want to put your future in their hands. As a business you probably cannot afford it financially, whereas they can.

BEA HP Heralds in place of Vickers Viscounts
I can remember BEA and the Ministry of Civil Aviation "solving a problem" and it went like this. After BEA and other airlines moved from Glasgow's Renfrew Airport (RFW) to Abbotsinch Airport (GLA) in May 1966, the ministry could not afford to resurface all of the Scottish Airports runways that were requiring it after a long period of use by BEA's Viscount fleet on the Scottish internal flights. BEA were reaching the point of selling on the Viscounts (V802s and 806s - the V701s had already gone) and needed a replacement. BEA were still nationalised and required the government to buy the replacement. The MCA solved the issue by giving BEA 3 HP Heralds which were being shipped back to the UK after being at the Duke of Edinburgh's disposal during his South American tour. This allowed repair to the runways to be dealt with more gradually. The Heralds were supplemented by a couple of Short Skyvans, also based at Glasgow. The Heralds had a short existence before being replaced by HS(?) ATPs and the Skyvans replaced by HS748s (for some reason that I have forgotten were known locally as Budgies; so the bigger ATPs were called Parrots. Before getting the Skyvans, BEA disposed of the 2 remaining DH Heron 1s, the third one having been written off on an air ambulance flight to Islay while we were still based at Renfrew. I seem to remember reading that either one of the sold on Herons or 748s being shot down in South Africa.  This would have been in a book called "Glasgow's Airports".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bill dunn251 (talk • contribs) 20:03, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Herald vs F27
The Herald was too little, too late. The F27 was approved and shipping by 1959. The Herald did have good short field performance, although the F27 was not too far behind. I remember HP pilots landing a Herald at Tapini in PNG, which is only suitable for Cessnas or military STOLS, because of the tight and steep short final. Nevertheless, by the mid 60s most authorities around the world had banned STOL ops for all passenger services. (Ansett was never allowed to operate their DHC-4 into Tapini.) F27s easily operated from 4000' grass strips, such as Munda in the Solomons.

These services operated in the 60s because they were heavily subsidized, for reasons of colonial expansion. The real economics of a 3000' bush strip is that large machines are not profitable there. Well, not unless there is a valuable crop to fly out, such as orchids (eg, Banz or Garina, PNG), or Colombian marching powder.

The Herald ended up suffering from chronic corrosion under the galley area, behind the cockpit. HP had little experience with passenger liners, and their design failed to incorporate extra coatings of green etch in spill/rain prone areas under the floor. One aircraft in Canada split open along the belly, starting at the galley, and the two halves opened out and were cut into by the props.220.244.141.124 (talk) 11:20, 17 September 2013 (UTC)