BAC One-Eleven

Updated: October 2026 – Two slim engines at the tail, a high T-tail and a fuselage that looks almost delicate compared with today’s jets: when an aircraft like that stands in a museum in British colors, it is very often a BAC One-Eleven. The short-haul jet was everywhere on European charter and scheduled routes from the 1960s to the 1980s, flying with BEA, British Caledonian, Dan-Air and, in Germany, with several leisure airlines. It later wrote a chapter in Romania: as the Rombac 1-11 it was built under license in Bucharest – and one of those aircraft opened Ryanair’s jet age in 1986. Here you’ll learn how the One-Eleven came about, how to tell the versions apart and where you can still see it today.

What is the BAC One-Eleven?

The One-Eleven is a twinjet narrowbody for short-haul routes of British manufacture. The two Rolls-Royce Spey engines hang on the sides of the tail, and the horizontal stabilizer sits on top of the vertical fin. The original Series 200 offered up to 89 seats, the stretched Series 500 – also called the Super One-Eleven – up to 119. Two pilots sat in the cockpit; a flight engineer was no longer needed.

Between 1963 and 1984, the British Aircraft Corporation built a total of 235 aircraft in Great Britain, mainly at Hurn near Bournemouth and for a time also on a second line at Weybridge. Add to that nine license-built aircraft from Romania. With 244 examples in total, the One-Eleven was one of the most successful British airliners ever, even though the American Douglas DC-9 far outsold it.

Today the One-Eleven is a historic aircraft. The last airworthy aircraft was retired in 2019. So you can no longer spot an active One-Eleven – but you can spot well-preserved museum examples.

From the Hunting H.107 to the One-Eleven

The story begins at Hunting Aircraft. In the late 1950s the company was looking for a jet successor to the turboprop Vickers Viscount and developed the Hunting H.107, a small jet for around 30 passengers. In 1960, under pressure from the British government, Hunting was absorbed into the newly formed British Aircraft Corporation, which also included Vickers and Bristol.

BAC thought the concept was promising and first enlarged it to 59 seats as the BAC 107 and then to around 80 seats as the BAC 111, powered by the Rolls-Royce Spey. On May 9, 1961, British United Airways ordered ten Series 200 aircraft, giving the starting signal. Customers from the USA soon followed, including Braniff, Mohawk and American Airlines, which became the largest US customer with 30 Series 400 aircraft. For a British jet, this was an exceptional success in the American market.

On July 28, 1963, the prototype G-ASHG was rolled out of the hangar at Hurn, and on August 20, 1963 it took off on its first flight. Only two months later, on October 22, 1963, G-ASHG crashed in Wiltshire during stall tests; all seven crew members were killed. The investigation revealed a problem typical of aircraft with a T-tail and rear-mounted engines: the deep stall. At a very high angle of attack, the horizontal stabilizer ends up in the wing’s separated airflow and loses its effectiveness, and the aircraft can no longer be recovered from the stall. BAC subsequently retrofitted a stick shaker and stick pusher, which warn the pilot and actively push the nose down. These findings fed into the development of many later rear-engine jets.

British United Airways opened scheduled service on April 9, 1965 on the route from London Gatwick to Genoa. That put the One-Eleven into service several months before the DC-9 – a lead BAC could not hold permanently, though, because of its smaller production capacity.

The versions at a glance

The One-Eleven grew in two directions: more thrust and range on the same fuselage, then a clearly stretched fuselage with a larger wing. The production numbers in the table follow standard reference works and may differ slightly depending on how they are counted.

Series	Built (approx.)	Special features
200	56	Original version, Spey Mk 506, up to 89 seats
300	9	More powerful Spey Mk 511, more fuel and range
400	69	Variant of the 300 for the US market with American equipment
500	86	Stretched fuselage, larger wingspan, up to 119 seats, Spey Mk 512
510ED	included in Series 500	Built for BEA, Trident-style cockpit, separate type rating
475	6	Short fuselage with the wing of the 500, low-pressure tires for simple runways
670	1 conversion	Quieter, reworked 475 for the Japanese market
Rombac 560/561RC	9	License-build of the Series 500 in Bucharest

The Series 500 appeared in 1967 and is the version you see most often in museums and in old photos. Its fuselage is around four meters longer than that of the early series, and the wingspan grew to around 28.5 meters. British European Airways ordered its own variant, the 510ED, with a cockpit modeled on the Trident’s. For the pilots, that even meant a separate type rating.

The Series 475 of 1970 was meant to take on the Fokker F28: the short fuselage of the early series combined with the larger wing of the 500 and softer tires that could also handle simple runways. It did not find many buyers. Some One-Elevens also flew as business aircraft or government jets.

Rombac: the One-Eleven from Bucharest

The most unusual part of the One-Eleven story takes place in Romania. The state airline TAROM was already flying the One-Eleven when head of state Nicolae Ceaușescu signed a license agreement on June 9, 1979. The package provided for BAC to deliver three complete aircraft and for Romania then to build at least 22 aircraft itself, with a gradually increasing share of Romanian manufacturing. The type was henceforth called the Rombac 1-11. The Spey engines were also built under license, at Turbomecanica in Bucharest.

The first Rombac, YR-BRA of the Series 561RC, took off from the Băneasa plant on September 18, 1982 and went to TAROM on December 29, 1982. After that, the program stalled. Romania lacked hard currency for imported components, the hoped-for export orders never came, and the One-Eleven was no longer competitive in noise and fuel consumption. In the end, only nine aircraft were completed; two more were left half-finished. The last Rombac went to the Romanian airline Romavia only in the early 1990s. A fresh start with modern Rolls-Royce Tay engines failed because the announced large orders never materialized.

Because TAROM and Romavia liked to lease their aircraft to Western airlines, Rombacs turned up all over Europe. Besides Ryanair, they flew with Lauda Air, among others, which leased Rombacs from TAROM. For Ryanair, the One-Eleven was the step from turboprop to jet, before the airline switched entirely to the Boeing 737 in the mid-1990s. If you fly to Bucharest today, you can look out for the two parked Rombacs at Henri Coandă Airport – whether they can be seen from publicly accessible areas is something you should clarify beforehand.

The One-Eleven in German-speaking countries

In charter traffic of the 1960s and 1970s, the One-Eleven was a familiar sight in Germany too. Bavaria, Germanair and later Bavaria Germanair operated One-Elevens, as did Paninternational and Hapag-Lloyd Flug.

A serious accident is also linked to Germany: on September 6, 1971, the Paninternational aircraft D-ALAR had to make an emergency landing on the A7 autobahn shortly after takeoff from Hamburg and hit an overpass. 22 of the 121 people on board died. Investigators found that the tanks for the engines’ water injection had mistakenly been filled with kerosene instead of demineralized water.

How to recognize the One-Eleven

In a museum or on old slides, the One-Eleven is quickly identified with a little practice. These three observations help you most.

You recognize the stretched Series 500 by the additional rows of windows ahead of and behind the wing. The Series 200, 300 and 400 look very similar from the outside. Only the registration makes you completely sure; how British registrations are structured is explained in the guide to British G- registrations.

One-Eleven, DC-9, F28 or Caravelle?

The era of rear-engine jets produced many similar silhouettes. The finder helps you narrow it down.

For a direct comparison with the competitors from America, take a look at the Boeing 737-200, which carries its engines under the wings and so took a completely different path. More on how to tell engines apart in detail can be found in the post Recognizing engines.

Noise, certification and the end of scheduled service

The Spey was a robust but loud engine. With the tightened noise rules of the early 2000s, continued operation became expensive: hush-kit packages for the Spey cost a lot of money, and many European operators preferred to let the One-Eleven go. British Airways had already ended regular use in October 1992. In 2010, the European agency EASA also accepted the request by Airbus, as holder of the type certificate, to surrender it – for aircraft registered in the EU, that was practically the end.

In Africa, mainly in Nigeria, the One-Eleven flew longer, until the type had to be grounded after a serious accident in Kano in May 2002 with more than 100 fatalities. After that, mostly test aircraft remained: the British company QinetiQ used One-Elevens until December 2012, and Northrop Grumman used the last airworthy aircraft in the USA as a flying test bed for the F-35’s sensors and retired it in May 2019.

Where you can see the One-Eleven today

For spotters, the One-Eleven is a classic museum target. You will find the most important addresses in Great Britain:

Location	Example	Note
Brooklands Museum, Surrey	G-ASYD (Series 475)	At the historic BAC site in Weybridge
IWM Duxford	G-AVMU (510ED)	In the collection of British airliners
Solent Sky, Southampton	ZH763 (ex QinetiQ)	Moved from Cornwall in 2023
Gatwick Aviation Museum	Forward fuselage of G-AVMO	The rest was scrapped at East Fortune in 2026
Bucharest Henri Coandă	YR-BRE, YR-BRI (Rombac)	National cultural heritage since 2021

You best combine Duxford with an airshow day; what to expect there is covered in the post on the Duxford air shows, and you will find the spot itself under IWM Duxford. The National Museum of Flight in East Fortune displayed a complete 510ED for a long time but handed it over in 2026 – check what is currently on display there before a visit. As a general rule: museums change exhibitions, lend out exhibits or temporarily close halls. A look at the museum’s website before you travel saves disappointment.

You can gauge how rare such a sighting is for your collection with the guide How rare is my sighting?. And if you are interested in the fate of the airlines that once flew the One-Eleven, you will find plenty of background in the article on major airline collapses in Europe.

Common mix-ups and how to rule them out

Conclusion

The BAC One-Eleven was Britain’s answer to the short-haul jets of the 1960s – in service earlier than the DC-9, successful in Europe and even in the USA, but in the end overtaken by the competition. Its second life as the Rombac in Romania and its role as Ryanair’s first jet make it one of the most fascinating classics of all. Today you can find it only in museums, but at easily accessible places like Brooklands and Duxford.