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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 0178.PDF
FUCHT International, 23 January 1964 119 AIR CO MPs v. The Experts E R c E PARLIAMENT keeps a check on public spending by appointingcommittees which call the experts publicly to account. In the civil aviation field, the last major Parliamentary grilling of the experts was the 1959 select committee inquiry into BO AC and BE A. Now published is the report of a committee which, from the beginning of March until the end of July last year, asked a lot of fundamental questions about the development of British transport aircraft.* The witnesses examined were the most senior officials in the Ministry of Aviation, Air Ministry and Treasury, BOAC and BEA, and in the aircraft industry. The questions asked are deep and wide-ranging and the answers given are important not so much for their revelations as for the way in which they put the record straight. There is much in this commit- tee's 40-page report, and in the 200 pages of evidence appended, that calls for the amendment if not the re-writing of many contem- porary chronicles; and there is more than one passage about bygone controversies which exposes contemporary spokesmen as half-truth mongers. This is real, if tardy, public accountability, even though much of the obviously really interesting evidence appears as *•*. The main weakness of this particular report is historical. Wit- nesses differed in their recollections of what actually happened, for instance, during the DH.118/VC10/707 controversy, and over the DH.121/Airco/BEA affair, simply because it was all so long ago. An example is Sir Matthew Slattery's remark in evidence on why BOAC went for turboprops instead of jets: "That was 1948 and no one then had even conceived the Comet." In 1948 the Comet was not only conceived, but the prototype was nearly built. Perhaps the right formula for the operations of these committee investigations is a higher frequency and a shorter elapsed time. This would then avoid the overlapping that inevitably occurs between one monumental inquiry and another five years later. For example, much of the evidence taken about the TARC Transport Aircraft Requirements Committee was similar to that taken by the Select Committee five years ago (both inquiries, incidentally, corning to the conclusion that the TARC has proved pretty ineffective). The committee took evidence on all major British transport projects and these are dealt with in this review type by type. Concorde The estimate of £150-£l 70 million was "speculative" and "no precise estimate" was available when the decision to go ahead was taken. The committee "cannot understand the failure of the Treasury to make contact with the French Ministry of Finance before the agreement was prepared." Nor can the committee under- stand why the Treasury failed to take part in the preparation of the agreement and to seek participation on the committee of officials: "Parliament is entitled to believe that when decisions of this kind are under consideration, the Treasury are actively concerned at every stage." The report's criticisms of the Concorde project are financial and the committee is in fact "struck by the contrast between the careful consideration" paid to the technical and, on the other hand, the financial aspects of the Concorde. It is revealed that the Anglo- French agreement contains "no provision whatever" for the possi- bility of the French abandoning the project and leaving the British contribution possibly to be written off. The committee is "concerned about the wisdom of entering into such a commitment in the absence of more precise financial data about the probable cost," and does not accept the argument—submitted in confidential evidence—that it would have created a bad impression to have put in a break clause: 'If relations with the French Government and aircraft industrya re as delicate as this argument would seem to imply, some doubt must inevitably be cast on the whole agreement." disappointingly, the report does not probe very far into the workings of this entirely novel 50-50 agreement. What contribution «e the French making to the HP.115 and BAC-221 low-speed and tosh-speed test vehicles that are such a vital part of the Concorde Pjggamme, the cost of which seems to be entirely borne by the Second Report from the Estimates Committee, Session 1963-64,transport Aircraft. HMSO, London. 16s 6d. British side ? The Committee could also have probed the delivery- date reservation system, which is now playing a measurable part in the financing of the project. Of particular interest is the letter from BOAC's secretary to the Ministry of Aviation outlining, for the record, BOAC's commitment to the Concorde—a letter which is likely to be turned to more than once in the years ahead. The probable price of a Concorde is officially given for the first time. According to Mr Meeres of the Ministry of Aviation the cost per aircraft might be £3-£4 million and it may be possible for the Government to recover a good deal of its money on sales of 150 to 200 aircraft. Assumed life of the aircraft was said by Mr Meeres to be about ten years. The committee is perhaps misjudging airline reaction to the pros- pect of supersonics as "cool"; already more orders have been placed for the non-existent American supersonic airliner than for the Concorde (footnote, page xxvi). An RAF witness did not see the Concorde as a strategic transport, though looking much further ahead the RAF might find it "useful for some other operational role." The French Air Force were said to be "extremely interested." The presence of *** in evidence about Air France being the intended first operator of the medium-range Concorde invites speculation as to whether it is now a fact that this version has been abandoned in favour of one long-range Concorde. VC10 There is also much *** censorship in the evidence given on the VC10. The committee probes into the history of the project, noting BOAC's agreement in 1956 to "what they regarded as a definite condition of the Minister's permission to buy the Boeings." However, Ministry witnesses denied that there was any "direct or implied coercion" to buy VClOs, but the report notes that evidence (including confidential evidence) submitted by BOAC conflicted with this account. BOAC's recent chairman, Sir Matthew Slattery, told the committee that "by no stretch of the imagination" was the VC10 order a commercial decision; and furthermore the change- order for ten super VClOs "was done under pressure from the Minister in order to complete the formation of the British Aircraft Corporation." The committee thinks that this is exaggerated but nevertheless con- cludes that the Minister forced BOAC to order the ten Super VClOs as well as 35 Standard VClOs (an order later changed to 30 Super VClOs and 12 Standard VClOs) "at a far earlier stage than had been originally envisaged." According to Sir Matthew Slattery, BOAC's option was exercisable in 1962, and had the matter been considered in 1962 "those aeroplanes would not have been ordered because they were not necessary. They were ordered (in 1960) under pressure to enable the formation of the British Aircraft Corporation... Having got oneself established operating 707s there is no possible commercial justification in introducing a new type and certainly not one which comes into service some four or five years later ***. The cost of doing that to the corporation is very much indeed •**." Sir Matthew said all this to the committee in April last, a month before his managing director, Sir Basil Smallpeice, publicly an- anounced that BOAC had ten too many aircraft on order, raising perhaps the most difficult of all the problems confronting their successor, Sir Giles Guthrie. The committee does not probe, as it might have done, BOAC's commercial vacillations over the VC10 specification, choppings and changes that certainly led to delays. But, as the future is more important than the past, the most pertinent passages on the VC10— and perhaps in the whole report—occur in Para 106: "Confidential information makes it clear that BOAC will suffer a considerable financial penalty for introducing the VC10. Apart from any other considerations, there is the matter of introduction costs." The evidence is heavily asterisked—in paras 492-494, for example, where obviously Sir Basil Smallpeice and Sir Matthew Slattery are telling the committee about the £8-£14 million higher operating cost of the VC10 compared with BOAC's 707 fleet. [To be continued]
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