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Aviation History
1977
1977 - 0021.PDF
FLIGHT International, I January 1977 19 • PROPHECY is fraught with risk, as Marcus Langley's retrospective analysis on page 21 indicates only too well. But Flight's specialists are never theless going to try to outline some of the watersheds to come in 1977. Perhaps most important is the pros pect that fresh civil orders will launch the new generation of airliners and that the manufacturers will not enter the market divided into rival Euro pean and US camps. The notion of transatlantic co-operation took hold firmly during 1976. On the other hand, Europe itself still needs to achieve the degree of unity necessary to avoid unilateral departures such as the French approach to McDonnell Douglas last summer. The European Common Market Commission in Brussels is still waiting impatiently for the Council of Ministers to accept and promulgate the decisive declaration of united intent. Such formal co-ordination is not helped by nationalisation wranglings in France and Britain. Aerospatiale, having lost one million Francs a day for a year although three of its four divisions are profitable, is included in a parliamentary investigation into the spending of government money by the aviation industry. Britain, following the political road towards a profitable airframe and missile industry, is intent on owning the golden goose but is showing once again that politicking around in commerce breaks more golden eggs than it produces. Pressure on British Government spending in the nationalised indus tries over the next two years can only damage the prospects for essential State investment in new civil airliner projects. Deprived of private invest ment and squeezed by Government economies, the industry runs the risk of declining to the level of the work- starved aircraft division of Aero spatiale. The world's airlines will not wait for Britain to decide whether it wants to join the new ball game. Commercial aviation A hefty fuel price rise is all that the airlines are likely to find in their Christmas stockings for 1976, but at least they are fairly well prepared for the shock this time. Traffic should be healthy enough to let the industry pass the higher fuel prices on to the consumer. If there is a fuel price rise, and if the airlines succeed in weathering it without losing profitability, 1977 may very well see the chequered flag go down for the next generation of sub sonic airliners. But which next-genera tion airliners? If the airlines do make up their minds this year it is hard to see how Boeing's desire to sort out collaborative alignments well in advance of airline orders will be satis fied. Neither is it easy to see more than a couple of new types being launched. "It's like the old Le Mans 24-hour race, where the flag dropped In the 1977 skies and everybody sprinted across to the cars," comments one observer, "but now there are only two cars and eight drivers." Of current projects the Franco-US ASMR (Advanced Short/Medium- Range, alias Mercure 200) seems to be in the lead politically, although no body is forming a queue to take up the last 35-40 per cent of the total investment still available to other partners. British, Dutch and German money is important to ASMR, but Boeing too is offering a 35 per cent share in a closely similar aircraft, the 7N7. If one of these narrow-bodies— with two cropped 20-tonners or either ten-tonner—gets a launch order this year, the other is likely to follow with barely decent haste. In contrast to the narrow-body projects, both the US re-inventions of the A300—7X7 and DC-X-200—went rather quiet in the last quarter of this year when it became clear that United Airlines was not interested in deciding on a 727 replacement for another two years or so. McDonnell Douglas is preoccupied with planning ASMR and breaking even on the DC-10, and Boeing is too busy selling 727s. It will not be surprising if both of those projects are still in the brochure stage by the beginning of 1978. But Boeing is not likely to let its ideas stagnate, and Lockheed may start looking more closely at the market. An order for the Airbus A300 from a US airline would worry the American manufacturers, but they are unlikely to move without a big US launch order. This year must bring the decision which procrastination by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has forced out of 1976, on landing rights for Concorde at New York Kennedy. If the Port Authority lets Concorde land, it will mark the start of the real commercial test of supersonic transport. What Air France and British Airways—both charged with returning a profit as well as flying the flag—will do if the door stays closed remains to be seen. For British Airways the Concorde decision will be tied in with the other big Anglo-US issue, the renegotiation of the Bermuda Agreement. New US Transportation Secretary Brock Adams may bring a policy to his negotiating team, but it is likely to be February before battle is truly joined between single designation and capacity control. Secretary Adams may well be wondering why the British have denounced the very agreement which they cited in support of Concorde operations into the USA. He may well wonder at a government whose civil aviation policy cannot stand the test of its own law. He will certainly wonder how he should go about telling either Pan Am or TWA to get out of the New York-London market, as the British are demanding. The policy and style of Brock Adams will be important this year. He takes over a noise-abatement pro gramme in its early stages, and he must decide whether to press on with retrofit to Part 36 standards or whether to let the airlines take the replacement option. He wants to trans fer control of policy from the Civil Aero nautics Board to his own Department, and he may decide to increase fares rather than add a ticket tax to pay for retrofit. As airlines and manufac turers have made clear in recent weeks, FAR 36 isn't really all that quiet. It will be the new generation— possibly the class of '77—which makes the difference. Defence With a preliminary Rockwell B-l production go-ahead already given, yet another review of the programme might seem superfluous. But President Carter's present ambivalence on (and earlier opposition to) the bomber must raise doubts as to' whether this $22 billion project will emerge entirely unscathed. Outright cancellation, with more than 100 Soviet Backfires al ready in service, could be economic ally as well as militarily disastrous. A reduction in planned force strength is nevertheless a strong possibility. Can Nato boost its sagging morale and pull itself together with a multi-
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