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Aviation History
1967
1967 - 0073.PDF
Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in THURSDAY 19 JANUARY 1967 Number 3019 Volume 91 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Assistant Editor KENNETH OWEN BSc DCAe AFRAeS Air Transport Editor H. A. TAYLOR Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE f In this F U World News H Parliament; Robert Blackburn B Air Transport • Simulating ATC at Bretigny • Sport and Business I Letters H Industry International • The NGTE Rigid Rotor • "Air-Cushion Vehicles" issue 74 76 77 84 85 86 88 89 Special feature: Light-aircraft Electronics 9 3 Spaceflight I 0 I Defence I 0 4 Straight and Level I 0 6 Ilifle Transport Publications Ltd, DorsetHouse, Stamford Street, London SE1: telephone Waterloo 3333 (STD.01).Telegrams/Telex: Flight Iliffepres, 25137 London. Annual subscriptions; Home£6. Overseas £6 for one year; £12 for three years. Canada and USA $18 forone year; $36 for three years. Second Class Mail privileges authorised at New Branch Offices: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora-tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, 401 Lynton House, WalsallJJoad, Birmingham 22b; telephone 021 BIRchfield 4838. Manchester, 260 Deans-Bate Manchester 3; telephone Blackfriars *412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 123Hope Street, Glasgow C2; telephone Central 1265-6. Bristol, 11 Marsh Street,Bristol 1; telephone Bristol 21491-2. .^wVork, NY: Thomas Skinner &Co(Publishers) Ltd, 300 East 42nd Street, New York 10017, USA; telephone 867- fL,Ili![e Transport Publications Ltdi»o/. Permission to reproduce illustra- ons and letterpress can be granted onlyunder written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with dueacknowledgement. A Matter of Judgment ANY DAY now BEA will confirm their order for the One-Eleven 500,i the stretched 100-seat development of BAC's short-haul jet. Existing One-Eleven operators are already interested; last week one US airline president, who was in Britain to collect his last One-Eleven 200, was at Weybridge to check for himself that the long-awaited stretched version is really going ahead. This particular airline has been saying for a long time that it will need a bigger aeroplane of some sort. It was even thinking of switching to DC-9s or 737s. Now hopes are higher that this airline and others will stay with BAC—which means staying with Rolls-Royce, and with the host of equipment suppliers who have helped the One-Eleven to win its good reputation. There is also a market—though it is harder to get and it comes in penny numbers—among the growing number of small charter companies. Some new customers may of course want the smaller One-Eleven 400 but they will be even more interested if they know there is a bigger version available when they need it. BEA's order adds a new dimension to the One-Eleven's potential. It may also lead to further development of the civil Spey; as Six Anthony Milward of BEA has said, "what this country needs is a good 14,0001b engine." Rolls are at present understandably conservative about rating the Mk 512 Spey beyond 12,0001b to JT8D levels of 14,0001b and more. But a more thrustful Spey will enlarge the One-Eleven's market, not to mention that of the Trident. Perhaps the 15,0001b Spey now being developed with Allison for the US Navy's A-7A will point the way. The Soothsayers and the Airbus We recall BEA's "never" when asked in 1960 whether they would buy the One-Eleven, which was at the same sort of project stage as is the Airbus today. BEA's market studies then showed that they would not want the One-Eleven. We wonder whether British aviation is not becoming too obsessed with market research. Obviously it is important, and we would be the first to applaud any move by the Board of Trade to do something about the serious data famine which for years has handi- capped both British air transport and the industry trying to supply it. But the market-research soothsayers can only narrow the margin of risk; they cannot provide go/no-go decisions; and sometimes they can be so wrong that management might just as well have looked at its tea-leaves. A decision on the Airbus, we are told, still awaits the outcome of "market studies." These have now been going solemnly on for six years— ever since the RAE's airbus committee of 1961. There comes a time when the studies have to stop. Does anyone doubt that the airlines are going to buy 250/300-seat regional-route jets to complement the 747s? Lockheed do not doubt it. The £130 million launching cost of the proposed European Airbus is high, but not in relation to the £400 million or so that BEA and British airlines alone are likely to spend on this type of aircraft between 1975 and the end of the century. Is this £400 million—and at least as much again from other airlines—going to go to the American industry? Many of the best things in aviation, even in this technological age, have resulted from the judgment of determined personalities—Rickover and the nuclear submarine, Raborn and Polaris, Camm and the 1127— and, come to think of it, Edwards/Laker and the One-Eleven. At the moment the European Airbus is hardly more than one of those impersonal, paper-producing committees so beloved of Whitehall.
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