Hawker Siddeley Trident 1978, 117 Tridents had been produced. BEA's successor British Airways withdrew its Tridents by the mid-1980s. Trident services ended in China in the early 1990s. In 1953, as British European Airways (BEA) introduced the world's first turboprop-powered civil airliner – the Vickers Viscount – into passenger service, the operator was already considering what would be required of a potential successor. Following the entry into service of jet airliners in 1952, many airline managers and economists remained sceptical and advocated turboprop airliners as replacements of piston-engined airliners. In 1953, while several manufacturers across the world were investing in pure jet-powered aircraft,
Vickers Viscount TAA. Unstated was the requirement for both airlines to have identical equipment. The first North American airline to use turboprop aircraft was Trans-Canada Air Lines (TCA), with a small fleet of Type 700 Viscounts. Initially, TCA was cautious of the Viscount due to the turboprop engine being a new technology, and there had been a preference for acquiring the piston-engined Convair CV-240 instead; praise of the Viscount from pilots and a promise from Vickers to make any design changes desired by TCA persuaded it to procure the Viscount instead. On 6 December 1954, the first Viscount was delivered to Canada