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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0141.PDF
FLIGHT, 1 February 1957 143 BRITANNIA PROGRESS REPORT The Background of Production and Development at Filton THE entry of the Britannia into airline service provides asatisfying opportunity for surveying the pattern of progressat Bristol. Never before has a transport aircraft on the threshold of service been so exhaustively tested, or so thoroughlyproved. And it is unusual for an airliner to enter service with production of the series complete, modified to a late standard, andwith larger successors already flying. In terms of developed manufacturing techniques, fatigue andstructural testing, service and overhaul knowledge—factors in which there is hardly any substitute for experience—Bristol areable to offer to the airlines a new airframe and a new engine which have been developed to a standard usually associated with severalyears of airline experience. Associated with this background are the expanding facilities that have been set up for Britannia andProteus servicing and a training school for instruction in main- tenance and servicing. It would be hard to imagine a morepropitious beginning. To discuss these aspects of Britannia progress and to find outsomething more of the development programmes and future think- ing at both the Bristol Aircraft and Engine companies, Flightrecently visited Filton—on a deteriorating January day that kept the staff Gemini confined to its hangar. From Mr. Peter Masefield, managing director of BristolAircraft, Ltd., we learnt something of his company's planning for the years ahead. Bristol have recently formed an active marketstudy group to assess the future trends of air traffic and to review the market that will be available to the Britannia or its successors.One of their studies—an assessment of the capacity that will be required to accommodate world traffic in the 1960s—is of particularinterest, as it was just this fascinating (if slippery) terrain which Flight surveyed in Part I of its examination of traffic and transportsin 1962—"The Hungry Airlines" Flight, November 23). It was apparent from the graph of the Bristol analysis that, inthe region where the crd mates of the two curves are comparable, the results are roughly the same. Both show that a substantial world market exists for additional aircraft in the 1960s. Butalthough the conclusions of these studies are similar, the basic assumptions are by no means so. Bristol have, in our view, beenpessimistic in assuming a traffic rise of only ten per cent per year; pessimistic because the average annual increase since 1948 has been16.6 per cent and there seems little reason to forecast a decline. But allowing for the cautious estimate—and this traffic growthguessing-game is played in deadly earnest by every manufacturer— it was interesting to see that the balance had been swung in favourof similar totals by Bristol's estimate for the rate of attrition of present piston-engined fleets. "As soon as passengers getacquainted with the joys of turbine-transport travel," explained Mr. Masefield, "load-factors on piston-engined aircraft will falloff." And this, he expected, would happen quite rapidly from 1960 when the "turbine age" begins. The Bristol estimate of thisvitally important and hard-to-predict factor of piston-engine fleet decline in assessing the market situation a few years ahead is lentsignificance by the frequency with which Flight has been taken to task for over-estimating (a reduction of 48 per cent by 1962) therate at which present fleets will be written off. Another intriguing market survey curve was one that had beendrawn on a "supposing all the aeroplanes in the world . . ." basis. It showed an estimate of the number of Britannias that would berequired if they could be exclusively sold on every route for which they are suitable; and Britannia flexibility is such that this repre-sents a very large total indeed. "They won't all be Britannias, of course," said Mr. Masefield; but it is interesting to muse upon theunconfined and confident thinking that provoked this analysis. "We believe in the turboprop," he emphasized, and he went on topredict an upsurge of turboprop interest among the airlines when the Britannia goes into service. Although Bristol are wide awake to the possibility of a rapidly-developing market for in-service-in-1965 medium jets, it is to developments of the Britannia that they feel the airlines shouldlook for the richest economic rewards. The airframe has plenty of The centre bay of the Britannia Assembly Hall. In the foreground is the first 313 for El Al; beyond it a 312 for B.O.A.C.—both due for delivery in May. In the left background is B.O.A.C.'s fifteenth and last 102. •:* -&*": rx-
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