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Aviation History
1973
1973 - 0126.PDF
76 WORLD NEWS Stable future for BAC In a New Year message to the em ployees of the British Aircraft Corporation, published in the company newspaper on January 10, Sir George Edwards, chairman of BAC, says: "We start 1973 financially strong with an order book of over £360 million— nearly half of which is for export." Sir George also stressed that General Electric and Vickers had re cently shown their confidence in the strength and future of BAC by buying the Rolls-Royce shares and so becom ing joint owners of BAC—which, he said, could look forward to a stable future based on the support of those two powerful companies. British Aircraft Corporation, Sir George claimed, now had the most professional management in the busi ness and it was one which already had great experience in the field of Euro- The 55ft-long rear fuselage of the third production Concorde being loaded aboard the Airbus Industrie Super Guppy at Filton for transport to the Toulouse production line pean collaboration. BAC's major air craft, Concorde, Jaguar and MRCA, were all European collaborative pro jects, while Intelsat IV, which BAC had produced with the Americans and Europe, beamed the television pictures of the Apollo Moonwalks across the world. BAC had formed a new company— Europlane — with German, Swedish and Spanish partners, and "we are now considering how best we can launch a new quiet civil aeroplane together." The future of European aerospace, Sir George concluded, clearly lay in such collaboration and there would, no doubt, be further strengthening of the links which already bound BAC and the companies with whom it already worked. This, however, would take time and there was no scope, added Sir George, for an early rush into mergers for the sake of them. The establishment of a healthy market came first. Chinese trade visit A Government trade delegation from the People's Republic of China, headed by the Minister of Foreign Trade, Mr Pai Hsiang-kuo, was due to conclude its visit to the United Kingdom today. The delegation had been guests of Mr Peter Walker, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and it was the first such visit by a Chinese Minister of Foreign Trade. During its visit to Britain the dele gation held discussions with Mr Walker, together with the Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs, Sir Geoffrey Howe, and the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Trade, Lord Limerick. The delegation also called on the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and the Prime Minister received the delegation on January 15. The Chinese also had talks with Sir John Keswick, president, and members of the Sino-British Trade Council. They visited Hawker Siddeley International at Hatfield, the BAC and Rolls-Royce factories at Bristol, and a truck and bus factory of British Leyland. Final preparations are now being made for the British Industrial Tech nology Exhibition in Peking (March 26 to April 7), a major effort by some 350 British firms to introduce a wide range of plant machinery and equip ment into China. Hawker Siddeley has already sold 20 Tridents to China, valued at nearly £70 million, and China has also signed preliminary purchasing contracts for three Concordes. BAC is holding dis cussions with China about production of VClOs. UK trade with China in the period from January to November 1972 totalled £60 million (exports £28-3 million, imports £31-7 million). With aircraft deliveries, exports are ex pected to show a marked up-turn in 1973. FLICHT International, 13 January 1973 UK-Malaysia air services A new air services agreement was signed by the Governments of the United Kingdom and Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur on January 11, pro viding for the air services of both parties to continue after the previous agreement lapses on January 24. It also covers the immediate provision of MAS services to Brunei. Dr Henri Coanda From Romania comes news of the death of the aviation pioneer Dr Henri Coanda on November 25, at the age of 86. He was known for his original thinking, which embraced a ducted fan aeroplane and the development of fluid dynamics. Henri Marie Jean Gustave Coanda was born at Bucharest on June 7, 1886. At the Paris Salon in 1910 he exhi bited an Antoinette-type aeroplane powered by a Cler.get engine driving a fan enclosed in a long cowling. Though unsuccessful, it was to set a precedent to be followed years later. The following year he settled in England and became technical manager of the Bristol and Colonial Aeroplane Company, where he was responsible for many biplane and monoplane designs. In 1914 he joined the French Army to build military aeroplanes for the Great War. After the cessation of hostilities he re turned to Romania where he con tinued work on aerodynamics. In October 1934 he described a method of influencing the flow of one fluid by interaction with another. This was the Coanda effect, which has since become the basis of boundary- layer control. His work was not confined to aviation; in 1918 he was building pre fabricated houses and after the Second World War was investigating solar-energy boilers and de-salination techniques. In 1971, as Minister Counsellor in the Romanian State Council, he visited England to receive the Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Aeronautical Society. Mr A. H. Hawes We record with regret the death on January 2 of Mr A. H. (Jimmy) Hawes, managing director of Hants and Sussex Aviation until 1970. Mr Hawes entered the aircraft industry as an apprentice with the Blackburn Aeroplane Company in 1908. After a. period of service with the Royal Flying Corps and with Imperial Airways he became the first engineer to be em ployed by F. G. Miles at Shoreham. During the war years he was works manager of Portsmouth Aviation, leaving to found Hants and Sussex Aviation in 1946. "Flight" next week will contain a detailed report from Italy on that country's aerospace industry, in cluding a technical description and cutaway drawing? of the Agusta A.109 helicopter. ••>" sanctions should be mandatory, Sweden and West Germany believed actions should be recommended only, while France suggested that offending nations 'should lose their membership of Icao. The United States proposal was re jected by 30 votes to 14, with five abstentions, and the committee de cided to consider the basic principles on which action should be based rather than the actions themselves. The Canadian delegate, Mr David Millar, told the meeting: "We all know only too well what the issues are. We are now in the position where we are discussing the principle behind whether or not we should be talking about principles." • A man was arrested and charged with attempted hijacking last week after he tried to board an air craft of Eastern Air Lines at La Guardia while carrying two bottles of cyanide gas.
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