FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1964
1964 - 2063.PDF
84 FUCHT International, 16 July 1964 AIR COM MERCE . . . THE OLD WARRIOR'S JET IN last week's issue of The Economist Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, for 15 years chairman of BEA, answered questions concerning the political and commercial responsibilities of running a nationalized undertaking. During the interview Lord Douglas fully discussed BEA's 1958 decision to order the Trident, and much of what he said about this controversial case, in which he fought a Minister and won, constitutes previously unrecorded history. The following was his reply when questioned about the psycholo- gical pressures as distinct from the legal pressures which Ministers can bring to bear on corporation chairmen:— "Oh, they can bring pressures on you as they tried to do over the Trident and, of course, over the Rotodyne. The Trident, as you know, was a result of an outline specification BEA put out for a new type of medium-range jet. And we sent copies of the specifi- cation to Vickers, to Bristols, to Hawker Siddeley and de Havilland. And they came out with their outline designs, and the one that we thought had the best performance and looked the most promising was the de Havilland. "That was when Aubrey Jones was the Minister of Supply and Harold Watkinson was Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation. And I said we wanted to have the de Havilland and was told by the Minister of Supply, that they didn't want us to have that, they wanted us to have the Hawker Siddeley—it was all mixed up with this plan for mergers of aircraft manufacturers you know. And then it came to a tussle on this, I stuck out and said: 'BEA wants the de Havilland. That's the one we want and that's the one you must let us have. If you are going to start to order our aircraft for us and tell us what we ought to get, you can take the financial responsibility for the corporation, because the financial success of the corporation depends to an enormous extent upon the type of aircraft that you buy.' "We haggled over that for some weeks, and for a time it was a complete deadlock. I simply told them that I wanted this de Havilland aircraft and the Ministers were saying: 'Well, you have got to go to the Treasury for the money to buy these aircraft at £30m and you can't have that unless I give the proposal my OK.' Which was quite true, a Minister could always inhibit you in that way by telling the Treasury not to give you the money. And that in fact was the situation for several weeks. In the end, however, Harold Watkinson, who was the most reasonable Tory Minister that I had, was ready to listen and to be persuaded. There was a bit of a song and dance in the Press and the House, and in the end Harold Watkinson gave way and in fact, I believe, went to the Cabinet and told them that he was going to approve our buying the de Havilland." Asked what sort of pressure a Minister can bring to bear before going to the stage of a show-down such as the one over the Trident, Lord Douglas replied:— "Well, he can ask you to go and see him, as happened in the case of the Rotodyne; Duncan Sandys called a meeting of myself, my engineers and the technical people at the Ministry to discuss the Rotodyne and, at first, BEA was reasonably enthusiastic. We said 'Yes, we think this looks as if it is going to be a good egg.' Well, then the weight of the aircraft went up, the price went up, the number of passengers it could carry went down, and all things put together resulted in the fact that it was not commercially viable. That is how it works; the Minister starts off by saying. 'Well, this looks a good thing; do you think you could make ;; go of this?' And, in the case of the Rotodyne, we really die our best, because we were quite keen on the aircraft to start with, but we found in the end that it rapidly went from bad to worse on us, and I had to go to the Minister and say, 'I am very som about that Rotodyne, Mr Thorneycroft, and although you may say we have led you up the garden path, because at one time we were as keen on it as you were, I've now got to tell you that I cannot order the aircraft.' And by then the Ministry had already committed themselves to a good deal of expenditure, development costs, and so on, and I must say the people I talked to took it very well. They said 'All right, if you say it is not a starter, you don't like it technically or commercially, then if that is your con- sidered judgment, we can't make you order it, we will just have to scrub the whole thing.' That's the way it works, more by discussion, not by beating the table." SUCCES8OR TO THE CARAVELLE? LAST week Gen Puget, president of Sud-Aviation, announced that his company had a project to replace the Caravelle. It was, he said, a 1,100 mile stage-length twin jet to carry between 150 and 200 passengers. To be called the Galleon, the aircraft could apparently be in service within seven or eight years. General layout would, he said, be similar to that of the Caravelle. Gen Puget added that both Air France and BEA had already confirmed that they needed such an aircraft in the future, though it would be surprising if BEA were not more interested in a develop- ment of the Hawker Siddeley Trident IE, which already has the range and with a little more stretch could no doubt be given the same seating capacity. There have been strong unofficial suggestions that BAC and Sud have been discussing a joint effort on this proposed new Caravelle as an extension of the Concord partnership. OVERFLY AT YOUR EXPENSE BOAC, among other airlines, is contesting a charge of £5 levied by the MoA for navigation services furnished to any aircraft flying in or through the Bahrein FIR without landing or taking off within the FIR during the course of the flight. The Bahrein Notam— 4/64 dated April 20—reiterated the charge previously announced in a normally worded Notam. The latest Notam used legalistic terminology which suggested that legal action is having to be taken to secure payment: "The services will only be provided on the understanding that by using them the commander or pilot of the aircraft enters into a contract on behalf of the operator (which contract shall be governed by English law) under which the operator contracts with the Minister to pay the charge." BOAC's protest is understood to take the form of non-payment and the corporation is believed to be owing, in the Ministry's eyes, more than £10,000 in respect of Bahrein navigational charges. It would be interesting to know how many other operators have refused to pay. Sometime ago Canada encountered trouble when ii attempted to levy a similar, though much lower, charge and was forced eventually to withdraw it. Irish International's latest Boeing 707-320C and one of the airline's last DC-3s—recently bought by Royal Nepal—illustrate the immense expansion of Aer L'mgus
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
