T.C.A. Trans Atlantic Service Lancaster ready for the Overseas Flight from Montreal Airport, Dorval, Canada.
06/15/2002. Remarks by Ed Coates: "CF-CMW was on the Canadian Civil Aircraft Register as a Lancastrian in 1943. The XPP was the very first conversion of the Lancaster 'Mark X Passenger Plane'. I believe they made two of them. The prototype conversion was destroyed by fire during engine trials in June 1945, and the other was lost in the Atlantic in December 1944.
TCA (or probably Canadair, in actual fact) then converted five others: CF-CMS, and CF-CMV to -CMZ, three of them were then sold in the UK. At this time the name Lancaster was probably used by the Canadians, since, strictly speaking, the term Lancastrian hadn't yet been devised. At around this time BOAC was having severe problems with their Avro Tudor aircraft.
Avro (in the UK) took a look at the Canadian subsidiary's Lancaster conversions and decided they could use the XPP in the interim until the Tudor problems were remedied (they never were). So Avro went ahead and further enhanced the Canadian conversion, numbering 20 aircraft. QANTAS had a number of them (I flew in one of them.) At that time Avro's decided to give the aircraft a different design number, "691", and call it the Lancastrian."
For more information about the Lancastrian XPP, visit the Naton Lancaster Society web site.