Airliner Aviation Art Print showing a Caledonian Airways Lockheed Tri-Star and Vickers VC-10 by Aviation Artist Roger Murray AGAvA

One of the greatest advantages of art is the ability to show things that never happened. In this flight of fancy, Roger Murray shows two aircraft that very nearly made it but in the end were not as commercially successful as their makers would have liked.

The Tristar entered service  in 1972 and an improved version during 1979, proving to be Lockheed’s final commercial aviation design. 250 were produced and this one is show in the Caledonian livery after the company was sold by British Air Tours in 1988.

Vickers’ VC-10 could have been a world-beater but due to its inflexible design specifications could not become the “jack of all trades” that the Boeing 707 did. Quiet and comfortable the VC-10 was flawed by being more expensive to run than its American counterparts

This picture brings together two era’s of airliner development when the pattern had not been set and manufacturers had to try different things to make them work. Some achieved lasting legacies and large orders while others disappeared.