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Aviation History
1970
1970 - 0025.PDF
FLIGHT International, I January 1970 II INTO THE SEVE ON THIS FIRST DAY of a new decade "Flight" endeavours to forecast what it may hold. Each of these short articles, looks at separate sectors of the aviation scene and endeavours to assess what its main trends will be in the seventies. Taken all together they are designed to cover all the subjects normally presented in "Flight"—air trans port, light commercial and private aviation, the aircraft industry, spaceflight and defence, ending with a note on its new language—the metric system. THE AIRLINES FOR THE AIRLINES THE 1960s were the decade in which air transport finally established itself as the medium of mass travel. But they ended on a slightly sour note of financial difficulty, with a promise of fresh troubles on the way, at any rate in the early 1970s. Within months the first of the big jets, the Boeing 747, will be making its impact on the market. And within four years of that, Concorde will be establishing a new category of travel, catering for a more exclusive market at fares surcharged for speed. Signs of upheaval caused by massive re-equipment are already appearing. Scheduled airlines, for example, are already racking their brains for tariff measures which will stimulate the markets needed to fill their high-capacity jets. Typical of the type of struggle developing is that between the Ameri can airlines and those of smaller countries. In its present expansionist frame of mind the American airline industry, with full moral support from its Government, is in an aggressive mood, and even Britain is showing signs of a more protectionist attitude in its dealings with the USA. Part of the answer to problems of scale and adequate resources may, in the USA (and <o a much smaller degree in Britain), be found in the much-talked-of airline mergers. But outside the USA it will be in the field of technical and operational consortia—often multi-national—that answers will be sought to the problems of acquiring and deploying the new generation of aircraft. In support of the airlines there will be increasing activity by aircraft financing and leasing specialists, who will themselves figure as prominently as airlines in the manufacturers' order books. A battle -that will grow steadily more acute will be that between the scheduled and the non-scheduled airlines. The greatest part of the market growth on which expansion depends will be generated by the development of tourism and the "leisure industries", the traditional preserve of the non-scheduled airlines. Early in the decade the scheduled carriers must takei a major share of this trade, or go under to their rivals. By the end of the decade, with tourist traffic greatly outweighing other categories, the distinction between scheduled and non-scheduled flight may largely have dis appeared. On the British domestic front, airlines are not in for an easy time. Increasing inter-city competition from the railways in the early and mid-decade will be met only towards its end by STOL and, later, VTOL aircraft. The success of this depends not only on technical development of the aircraft but on the full Government-led integration of our present fragmented transport system. In closing, one must look briefly at the present increase in Russian political contact with the West, and ask whether it will not be followed by greater economic and commercial contact. If so, then Aeroflot bids fair not only to remain the largest, but to become the most powerful airline in the late 1970s or early 1980s. D.H.w COMMERCIAL TRANSPORT AIRCRAFT SUPERSONIC FLIGHT, the preserve of the business traveller for the early years of the 1970s, will start to become common place for the masses by the end of the decade. Public concern will then be for the vast amounts of government money being spent on the hypersonic transport or the sub-orbital vehicle, to be developed from the space shuttle which is even now in the project stage. Conceivably, the Boeing 2707 SST could suffer as a result of such advances, but sales of 100 could have been made by the turn of the decade. Concorde by this time will be well established in airline colours and will be starting to move on to the less dense routes. It will, in all probability, have sold as many as 400 units and. with a unit price in the order of £8.3 million, will have done great service to the balance of payments situations of Britain and France. Development costs will not be recovered but the project will have kept Europe
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