Historical Fleet

Vickers Vanguard

The Vickers Vanguard was a turbine powered aircraft used on Trans-Canada Air Lines' short to medium range routes. It commenced scheduled service on February 1, 1961 on a twice daily multi-stop routing between the cities of Montreal and Toronto and the Western Canada cities of Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.

Why was the Vanguard important?

TCA was the first airline in the world to put the Vanguard into scheduled service. Larger and faster than the Vicker's Viscount, it was sturdy and handled well thanks to a rugged wing structure.

The spacious Vanguard generally carried a load of about one hundred passengers at a cruising speed of 415 mph. Vanguards could be configured with more or less cargo room, and deployed strategically to assist with the transcontinental cargo imbalance whereby eastbound commodity traffic was generally less than half of westbound loads.

Technical characteristics

Period of use	1961-1972
Engines	Four Rolls-Royce - Tyne RTY 11
Seats (typical)	108
Cruise speed	415 m.p.h. (668 k.p.h.)
Range (full passengers)	2800 Statute Miles (4506 k.)