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Aviation History
1976
1976 - 0001.PDF
[FDJHiiKnr IMTERI\lATIO[\JAL © IPC Transport Press Ltd 1975 Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LU Subscriptions: B. J. F. Nason, Oakfield House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, Sussex RH16 3DH; Tel 0444 53281 A subscription form is at the back of this issue 2nd-class postage paid at New York; USA news-stand distribu tion by Eastern News Distributors, 155 W 15th St NewYork10011 US Diiect Air Mail, $62 20 p.a. Thursday 3 January 1976 Number 3486 Volume 109 Founded in 1909 First aeronautical weekly in the world Official organ of the Royal Aero Club Telephone: 01-261 8070 (Editorial) 01-261 8081 (Advertisement Sales) 01-261 8392 (Advertisement Production) Telegrams/Telex: Bisnespres Ldn, 25137 Publishing Director Dennis Holman Editorial Director IPC Transport Pres* Maurice A. Smith, DFC Group Advertisement Manager David Holmes Assistant Advertisement Jeremy Miller Manager (Europe) International Business Press Associates Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations |ABC[ Editor J. M. Ramsden Assistant Editor Hugh Field International Editor Mark Lambert Technical Editor Michael Wilson BSc. CEng, FBIS, MRAeS Editorial Staff Cliff Barnett John Belson Stephen R. Broadbent, BTech Brendan Gallagher Charles M. Gilson Ian R. Goold Mark Hewish Nigel H. Moll Stephen Piercey Bill Sweetman John Wilkinson Air Photography Tom Hamlll The professionals * Whether or not the SBAC is right to «. fight airframe nationalisation to the last ditch is a matter for debate. *• Political infirmities may yet frustrate this political adventure. In the mean time care must be taken not to mistake constructiveness for treason. Street-fighting the occupying power is not always the best way to preserve the interests of the inhabitants. Some extremely important appoint ments and decisions are now being made, These will affect the entire British industry (since airframes carry engines, equipment and avionics) as well as the European and inter national industry of which the British industry is a major and successful part. BAC's Iranian order for Rapiers, worth £186 million, got three lines of small type in one British newspaper, while public expenditure on declining industries is many times that on aircraft. But that's life. In terms of value-added the aircraft industry is now one of Britain's most important exporters. This has not been the result of any discernible national aviation policy. There must have been some good management somewhere, and Lord Beswick's priority job is to pick the best and put it to work for British Aerospace. Nationalisation or not, over-capacity and over-manning have to be faced. Beswick takes the view that there is so much business to be got—BAC's order-book alone is worth £1,000 million — that recruiting, not redun dancy, should be the problem. But can industry afford, say, two major civil- aircraft design, development and pro duction centres? Can it, to take one particularly difficult possible future choice, afford both Hatfield and Wey- bridge? Nationalisation or not, work in the backshops and design offices is thinning out at both centres. Yet some military factories are almost overflowing with work—Warton, for example. Rationalisation will be less difficult now that the "racial" differences are to be diminished. Beswick's skill will be judged by the extent to which he and his men preserve the best of the old rivalries and dispense with the worst of the waste—while winning new orders to maintain employment. The shopping lists of Egypt, Turkey, India, Iran, Japan, China and Russia are only a start and, as Dr Wilkinson of Rolls-Royce told the Royal Aero nautical Society the other night, a "tidal wave" of airliner demand can be expected at the end of this decade. Beswick is surely wrong to say, as he is reported to have done, that now is not the time to launch a new civil airliner. Morale will respond to a positive, let's-get-the-business approach. But rationalisation will have to be clearly seen on the agenda from the outset. Beswick is the first to admit his lack of industrial experience. Thus the chief executive's background should compensate for this. Depending on the man, an appointment from HS or BAC need not threaten objectivity. It could even help, bearing in mind the extent to which sectarian interests'— as did those of de Havilland, Vickers and so on—recede surprisingly quickly before the forces of a higher common cause. The preservation of divisional loyalties can be an expensive and frustrating luxury. Both Hawker Siddeley and British Aircraft Corporat- tion found this so after the 1960 mergers; and British Airways' sudden decision to eliminate Welsh and Scottish and other regional identities is not as insensitive as it might seem in this era of devolution. Regional identities flower best when the whole economy is strong. Beswick and his chief executive may be well advised to make a clean break straight for corporate loyalty, keeping the doors open for divisional loyalties later. To put it at its most far-fetched, workers and customers might well respond to the addressing of factories with names from the illustrious past—but eventually. The priority is to get everyone working for British Aerospace—the brotherhood of which should not stop at the gates of a particular factory, or of a particular department in a factory. The executive board, as the Aerospatiale and some German experience has shown, is much more important than the corporate board, whose members do not necessarily have to be aviation people, enriching strategic policy with the wisdom of other disciplines. The "combat" executive board is the one with which Beswick should be most concerned. Run by the chief executive, and com prising the financial director—who would, like the chief executive, be a member of the corporate board—it should be selected from the ranks of those with proven records of aircraft- industry design, engineering and pro duction, and of financial and market ing management. Professionals get a much better response from the pro fessionals—who, let it not be forgotten in all the political flak, have to con tinue to fly the aeroplane. IN THIS ISSUE World News Air Transport Light Commercial Defence Fire power Avionics In the Air: Piper PA-36 Pawnee Brave Aerial agriculture at Las Vegas Private Flight Letters Industry International Spaceflight Straight and Level 2 5 10 11 14 21 23 27 30 32 34 35 37 Front cover: The Pawnee Brave, carrying an export US registration, poses for Tom Hamill over Blenheim Palace in a lowering winter sun
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