Spartan Cruiser
type of aircraft
The Spartan Cruiser was a 1930s British three-engined transport monoplane for 6 to 10 passengers built by Spartan Aircraft Limited at East Cowes, Isle of Wight.
It was a development of the Saro-Percival Mailplane for passenger use.
Development
The Saro-Percival Mailplane was a three-engined monoplane mail plane designed by Edgar Percival, and built by Saunders-Roe Limited (Saro) at Cowes in 1931, the aircraft first flying early in 1932. It was a low-winged monoplane with a wooden wing and plywood fuselage powered by three 120 hp (89 kW) de Havilland Gipsy III engines. When Saro was financially re-organised, Percival sold his interest in the aircraft to Saro, who re-designated it as the Saro A.24 Mailplane. Due to the close ties between Saro and Spartan Aircraft, the development of the aircraft was transferred to Spartan, and the aircraft was re-designated again as the Spartan Mailplane. The aircraft was modified to accommodate two passenger seats. Starting on 15 June 1932, the Mailplane (G-ABLI) flew from Stanley Park Aerodrome (Blackpool) to Karachi, India taking a total of five days, 23 hours and 50 minutes.
The Mailplane reportedly generated no commercial interest, so the design was re-worked as a passenger carrier. This was designated the Spartan Cruiser, and the prototype (G-ABTY) first flew in May 1932, piloted by Louis Strange.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6593014. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1931 and 1932.
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This entry incorporates text from “Spartan Cruiser” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.