In the Autumn of 1963, I was working as a labourer on the runway at Heathrow when a VC10 landed 50 feet away from me. I marvelled at the beauty and elegance of it and I am told it was and still is a delight to fly. Of course the VC10 was British and represented one of the mainstays of our country's contribution to international air travel

Mr Williams,

As a current frequent pax on VC10s to various places in the world I agree with what you say. The unfortunate thing is the constant battle that is taking place to keep them in the air - a lot of today's flight are made with limitations or acceptable faults. The seats also face backwards...I don't whether they always did this or whether this is a current operator rule?

...but it is still a joy to watch flying and be onboard.

I used to work on RAF Transport Command aircraft in the Middle East in the 50's (Hastings,Valetta,Comet II and Beverley)All had rear facing seats as the RAF believed(and still do) that this was safer than the Civil forward facing seats.