Virgin 747-283

FR85

Hi All,

I've been looking at Virgin's retired fleet and I spotted "Shady Lady" G-VOYG which flew for various other airlines including BA and SAS (G-BMGS+LN-AEO). When she was with the former airlines she appears to have three windows on the upper deck similar to the -100's but then with Virgin she has eight. It doesn't look like an SUD mod happened and in the earlier pics windows don't look like they were plugged.

Any ideas?

There is actually a great youtube video based on the running of this very aircraft hosted by a Virgin crew, search Virgin 747-200 and it's the best part of two hours long!

billy few mates

I worked on that A/C many years ago when Virgin first started operating and BA were doing the maintenance on them. It was the most unreliable A/C in the fleet and with the registration MGS it was 'affectionately' referred to as 'Might Go Sometime' or 'Must Go Sick'.
There weren't too many among us who were sad to see the back of her....

FR85

billy few mates wrote: »

I worked on that A/C many years ago when Virgin first started operating and BA were doing the maintenance on them. It was the most unreliable A/C in the fleet and with the registration MGS it was 'affectionately' referred to as 'Might Go Sometime' or 'Must Go Sick'.
There weren't too many among us who were sad to see the back of her....

In the video they actually couldn't get a genny on number two kick in after start so it's funny you mentioned that!! I also read since my first post that she blew off wing heating pipes on a few occasions back in the early 90's doing damage to wings.....1992 I think.

What else did it do/not do??

billy few mates

I can't remember exactly what went wrong with it but it was always going tech somewhere or other. It wasn't just one particular problem it was just problem after problem, every time I went in on shift it always seemed to be there, every time it flew away it always seemed to go tech when it got there. We looked after quite a large fleet of A/C and this one was a complete rogue compared to all the others, we were forever changing engines, replacing fire wires, replacing connectors and contactors and generally struggling to keep it moving. I remember very few registrations of A/C I worked on from that era but MGS is a memory I'll take to the grave with me, it was an awful piece of 5hit....

Blue Punto

My sister worked for BA years ago and she too told me about G-BMGS
It wasn't that reliable for them either and crews used to hate seeing it on their shift (depending on were they were flying to)

billy few mates

I don't remember it flying for BA, when I first encountered it it was flying for Airtours (BA's charter holiday wing) then Caledonian then Virgin. I think it was originally ordered by SAS and from what I remember it had those horrible P&W JT9D engines which would have contributed to its un reliability...

Blue Punto

billy few mates wrote: »

I don't remember it flying for BA, when I first encountered it it was flying for Airtours (BA's charter holiday wing) then Caledonian then Virgin. I think it was originally ordered by SAS and from what I remember it had those horrible P&W JT9D engines which would have contributed to its un reliability...

Yes it flew for Airtours but my sister went from Airtours to Airways and so it was a BA carreer

FR85

She was indeed SAS to begin with. Quite a few mods look to have been done on her since first delivered to her time with Virgin. I think the engine instruments were changed from the tape style back to the standard gauges and then the three windows on the top deck went to eight.....just what I saw on airliners.net anywho