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Aviation History
1978
1978 - 1973.PDF
W«ck ending 9 September i 978 Number 3625 /plume 114 Published In association with Aeroplane Monthly and Airports inttmatfonal by IPC Transport Press Ltd, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LU, England. World's first and only complete aeronautical weekly © Copyright IPC Business Press 1978 Founded 1909 Second-class postage paid at New York, NY. and additional entries. Editor J. M. Ramsden Associate Editor Mark Lambert Assistant Editor Hugh Field Defence Editor Doug Richardson Production Editor Brendan Gallagher Technical Editor Mike Hirst BTech Air Photography Tom Hamill Air Transport BIN Sweetman General Aviation Hugh Field Cliff Barnett Nigel Moll News Ian Goold Technical Artists Frank Munger John Marsden Pictures Stephen Piercey Publisher Bryan C. Cambray FIMI Deputy Publisher and Group Advertisement Manager David Holmes US Publishing Consultant Warren H. Goodman (telephone [914] 941-0805) Advertisement Representatives Jack Bush Clive Rigden Richard Chandless Advertisement Production Howard Mason Overseas advertisement representatives: at back of this issue Telephone: 01-261 8081 (Advertisement Sales) 01-261 8392 (Advertisement Production) 01-261 8070 (Editorial) Telegram/Telex 25137 BISPRS G Subscriptions Manager B. F. J. Nason Telephone: England (0444) 59188 (UK and overseas subscrip tion rates at back of this issue) [*?ll International Business Press Associates IABCI Member of the Audit Bureau of Circulation NEXT WEEK MTEPW\8ATIOMAl- MRNBOROUGH SHOW REVIEW USUI IN THE/"'. PIUS CUTAWAY • This week's Farnborough report covers the show on the run, bringing you our specialist team's impressions and images of the first day. In next week's review we take a more measured look at Farnborough 78, recording developments on the trade and public days and assessing the show's significance as 'an aerospace watershed. • Hugh Field flies the Turbo Thrush Commander, Rockwell's high-powered cropduster. A Boeing and Rolls-Royce Farnborough coup FOR the last four or five Farnboroughs most airliner debate has been about replacing 3,000-odd short-haul twin jets. In an eve-of-show coup which surprised even themselves, Boeing and Rolls-Royce—with the support of Europe's biggest short-hauler, British Airways—gave the first answer: the Boeing 757 with RB.211-535s. Not Jet, ATMR, X-Eleven, A200, ASMR, Mer- cure 200, Europlane—nor any of the new-new and derivative projects to which many a good European air craft engineer has devoted years, months, weeks and weekends since 1970. Upon Boeing's airliner empire the sun shows no sign of setting. Pro vided it makes a good job of the 757 and its bigger 767 sister, and drops the 777, Boeing will rule into the 21st century. Douglas, Lockheed and Euro pean airliner makers will respond with 757 and 767 competitors; but not all will make a profit and some companies may, in the 21st century, have only old photographs to sell. For Rolls-Royce and British engin eering the 757 deal is a triumph. Air liner makers, when they decide on their lead engine, choose the supplier who, more than any other, will make or break them. Rolls-Royce beat onshore Pratt & Whitney and GE to board the Lockheed TriStar, and has now repeated the unrepeatable with Boeing. The American engine manufacturers will say that Boeing would have chosen them if their government had taken the entire financial risk. But they get public money from another trouser pocket, and in any case, the rules of pri vate versus public capital are chang ing. Boeing cannot fight foreign governments, so it has taken one into partnership. State subsidies are Europe's way of giving its technical quality an equal advantage. The 757 deal remains a triumph of European engineering ability, and of Rolls-Royce technical quality and commercial aggressiveness in particular. The danger is in Rolls-Royce re maining the industrial darling at the expense of its airframe fellow-country men, British Aerospace. If the French and Germans feel snubbed by the British Government, they can join the British airframe club. Improper though the French Government demand for a British Airways A310 order was, there were better ways of handling M Le Theule than actually throwing a.British Air ways order for Boeings in his face. But the French had been told long before that their demand was im possible. British ministers may have felt that M Le Theule was making a deliberately unacceptable condi tion, perhaps because those above him had other reasons for excluding the British from Airbus Industrie. Whatever the balance of perfidy, the card has been played—and at least the British came clean with it. They did not, in order to get into the Airbus bed, falsely conceal that they were bespoken to Boeing. We must now look to the future, accentuating the positive. Politics apart, the positives are: (1) British Aerospace the company remains true to its wish to be a full member of Airbus Industrie. (2) The French and Germans need a major financial, technical and production partner for the A310. (3) The A310 is not head- on with the Boeing 757. (4) British Airways will surely need an A310 ship-size between the 180-seat 757 and the 350-seat TriStar. (5) A Rolls- Royce A300/310 will be attractive in the market. Most positive of all, British and French and Germans can surely pro duce a medium airliner to rival the Boeing 757. The market is big enough for a competitor, and if they don't make one Douglas or Lockheed will. The market has brought Americans and Europeans together, just as it brought Snecma and GE together on the CFM56. If the 757 can unite the European airframe makers, an Ameri can partner—and American mar kets—will surely follow. J.M.R. IN THIS ISSUE World News Air Transport Defence HAWKER'S OTHER HAWK FLIES AGAIN General Aviation Business Flight Private Flight Industry International Avionics BRITISH AEROSPACE RESEARCH: IS THE BALANCE RIGHT? Letters Spaceflight FARNBOROUGH REPORT OSHKOSH SHOWTIME 930 932 935 938 940 941 943 944 953 956 957 965 1001 Front cover: The Mirage 2000 prototype, one of the stars of Farnborough 78, flew at 130kt and a steepiing angle of attack for this photographic session with the Flight Seneca
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