FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1967
1967 - 0109.PDF
Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World rounded in 1909 THURSDAY 26 JANUARY 1967 Number 3020 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 In this issue World News Parliament; Robert Blackburn Anglo-French Projects go Ahead Air Transport Letters A Night with Spooky Special feature: Furnishing and Finishing Industry International Keeping the Line Busy Sport and Business Defence Spaceflight Spacecraft Scoreboard Straight and Level 08 I 0 I I 14 22 24 29 40 4 I 42 43 45 46 5 0a 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 NewYork, NY. Branch Offices: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora-tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, 401 Lynton House, WalsallRoad, Birmingham 22b; telephone 021 BIRchfield 4838. Manchester, 260 Deans-gate, Manchester 3; telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 123Hope Street, Glasgow C2; telephone Central 1265-6. Bristol, 11 Marsh Street,Bristol 1; telephone Bristol 21491-2. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner & Co(Publishers) Ltd, 300 East 42nd Street, New York 10017, USA; telephone 867-3900 © Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd1967. Permission to reproduce illustra- tions and letterpress can be granted onlyunder written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with dueacknowledgement. £2,500 million Outlook EUROPEAN technology and the future of the British and Frenchaircraft industries were further consolidated by the AFVG agree-ment in Paris last week. By the time the last of perhaps 175 VG air- craft are delivered to the RAF in the late seventies (see pages 111 and 112) the programme will have earned at least £500 million for the British industry. The AFVG decision will help to restore stability and morale and may even help to stem the alarming rate at which the industry's best technicians are leaving or emigrating. Mr Healey and his colleagues are to be congratulated on the success of their difficult negotiations, which also concluded a most important helicopter agreement. These and other programmes already in hand will do much to expiate the damaging cancellations of 1957-65 and to restore confidence in the future. The Concorde, for example, is actually beginning to confound the pessimists; it represents a £250 million programme for Britain with the prospect of production orders over the next ten years worth a further £600 million. The P.I 127 is definite at last and will represent an investment of at least £70 million in R&D and RAF production orders, with a good prospect of exports. The Jaguar is a firm programme which could earn as much as £200 million—more with exports. The HS.801 Maritime Comet is firm and will represent an investment approaching £100 million. There is almost certain to be a national space programme, and ELDO has been amended to secure a better financial arrangement for Britain. The BAC One-Eleven 500 has been ordered by BEA, who expect to place orders worth £100 million for this aircraft and for the Trident 3. Beagle has been saved. The RAF's Phantoms will have Speys and British content worth at least £150 mil- lion; and Martel, Rapier, Blowpipe and other advanced weapons are all going ahead. Government contracts for modification and conversion work on current types (particularly V-bombers) is a major item of work, and orders for Lightnings and Buccaneers, One-Elevens and 125s, 748s and Jetstreams, Skyvans and Islanders represent perhaps £500 millions' worth of new business over the next decade. Westland's SH-3D programme for the Royal Navy is firm; the new British-designed WG.13 for the Army (and the new BS engine that will obviously have to be developed for it) represent big business, and the Sud 340 will be built in hundreds at Yeovil to replace the Sioux. The Next Decade All this could add up to more than £2,500 millions' worth of business over the next decade, excluding spares and exports—and excluding export orders for British engines and equipment chosen for foreign aircraft (e.g., £100 millions' worth of Speys for the LTV A-7As). The outlook is cheerful, though unsettled by the prospect of a BAC/HSA merger that could cause chaos and a State shareholding that will actually weaken State control of the industry by compromising Whitehall's power as a customer. There are no signs of early Whitehall reform, and this could prove to be a great frustration. Despite Lang, the Bloodhound affair, Plowden, Ministry-shuffling and a mounting wave of influential criticism of the Civil Service, the system that caused much of the trouble in the first place remains unchanged. So long as amateurism, anonymity, secrecy, disdain of Parliament and all the rest of it remain securely enthroned, the great endeavours on which the aircraft industry is now embarked are politically vulnerable to mis- carriage. The relevant task is not a BAC/HSA merger, but reform of the Parliamentary/Whitehall system.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
