The Hawker Siddeley HS 748 is a short range turboprop powered by a pair of Rolls-Royce Dart engines. Designed as a Douglas DC-3 replacement, it offered seating for 40 to 58 passengers on regional routes.

First flying on 24 June 1960, it was offered to airlines at a price of £176,000 for the initial version and £196,000 for the slightly upgraded version. While that may seem cheap, £176,000 is equivalent to about £4 million today. The HS 748 was the last aircraft designed by Avro, and was initially known as the Avro 748.

Hawker Siddeley HS 748 Video

Following on from the last video about the Aviation Traders Carvair, we stay in the United Kingdom this week to look at the Hawker Siddeley HS 748. First up is an interesting video showing a landing on a dirt strip in Bitam, Gabon from Just Planes.

You can see some on board service and the cabin from 1:25. The approach and landing kick off from 2:47 and it shows the HS 748’s short take-off and landing (STOL) capabilities quite well. Next up is a video of one of the aircraft doing touch and go training at Liverpool Airport in the UK.

You get to hear the unique sound of the Rolls-Royce Dart engines very well here. These engines were also used on other aircraft such as the Vickers Viscount, the Japanese NAMC YS-11 and the Dutch Fokker F27 Friendship. In fact, this engine first ran in 1946 and was still being produced in 1987!

Overall Thoughts

There were 380 Hawker Siddeley HS 748s produced between 1960 and 1988, with 312 produced by 1976. The launch customer was Skyways Coach-Air, who put the aircraft into service on 17 April 1962 on the Lympne to Beauvais service. This airline, incidentally, is the world’s first low cost airline apparently.

Aerolineas Argentinas was the other main customer of the first version of the HS 748, and Indian Airlines turned out to be the largest operator, with 26 aircraft. Other operators included VARIG, Thai Airways, LAN-Chile and the Royal Australian Air Force among others. The successor to the 748 was the BAe ATP.

Today, there are a number of aircraft in service in Canada. Wasaya Airways and Air Creebec have three each but they are all freighters. The last Air North passenger HS 748 was retired on 21 January 2021, which you can see in the tweet above. That means almost 59 years in passenger service, which is a great achievement!

Have you ever flown on board a Hawker Siddeley HS 748? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Jan Heistermann on Flugzeug-Fotos.de via Wikimedia Commons.