English built airliners were a total failure.

[unmanned transport]

Brabazon. (1)
Vanguard (44)
Britannia (83)
Comet (114)
VC10 (54)
Trident (117)
BAC 111 (236)
Concorde (10)

And now this small island nation has been reduced
to sub-contracting for the major airframe manufacturers.

[BusyB]

And what's wrong with the Viscount?

[Pontious]

The Viscount and VC10 are two of the most quiet and comfortable airliners I've ever flown in. The aircraft were perfect. The salesmen were the failures.

[fergineer]

And I suppose the fact that there are still varients of the Comet (Nimrod) still flying, the VC10 still flies and there are various 1-11 operations still going prove that they were certainly built to last then. OK so there ae none of he others left but Concorde has only just stopped flying........The british engineers could still build if given the chance but why cough up all the money when the costs can be shared nowadays.......I still value British Engineers amongst the highest in the world if not the highest.

[MarkD]

forgot the 146, ATP and Jetstream too.

[LTNman]

The Airbus 380 is a British aircraft assembled in southwest France. Airbus likes to promote that only 4% of the cost is the Toulouse production. It‘s generally accepted that 20% of the aircraft are the wings, and every Airbus ever built, over 3,300 to date, started life at Chester. 30% of the aircraft are the engines and here Rolls-Royce are the lead supplier. Common sense would suggest that other British suppliers contribute at least 10% to the overall cost of the aircraft. These include BAE SYSTEMS for the inner leading edge droop; GKN, secondary structure and shroud box; Messier-Dowty for the nose landing gear; Smiths Aerospace for the landing gear extension and retraction system and for the concentrator multiplexer for video; Dunlop are an important supplier as is Barnes Aerospace, Cytec Engineering Materials, The FR Group, Pau Aerospace and Senior Aerospace

[B Fraser]

Unmanned,

You have it completely wrong. The reason for a lack of commercial success is a combination of......

Pioneering and getting it wrong - The Comet 1 which was nobody's fault.

Government Interference - The Trident 1 which was reduced in size by the demands of Whitehall however by the time the 2C, 3 and 3B were ready, the 727 was streets ahead in numbers. The final models met the spec of the original design. Don't forget that this aircraft led the world in triplex systems and autoland

Having lost the lead to the States, we were always going to play catch-up however by the early 70's, we were a banana republic.

Now let's look at the positive side......
The 1-11 pioneered deep-stall avoidance and was hardly a commercial failure. The Trident was just about the fastest airliner ever that didn't need re-heat. The VC-10.....drooooool .....copied by the Sovs with their IL-62. Today it is the tanker of choice by the USAF (see other threads) when there is an alternative close by to their KC-10. The Vanguard, Viscount and the Britannia were wonderful in their day but the allure of the pure jet was too strong for the airlines.

The French got burned with their Dassault Mercure, the Germans with their overwing jet thingumybob, the cousins with Convair so in hindsight, we did rather well for a country going to the wall with the unions pulling the strings. Today, we make the wings and only decent engines for Airbus while the Europeans make the tube that holds them apart.

Just ask any lady pilot which country's aircraft snaps her knicker elastic

as a footnote, if this country is so bad at engineering.... why do almost all of the F1 teams choose the UK as their manufacturing base ? You'd be amazed at how much of the Ferrari is made in Guildford

[chimbu warrior]

What about the Heron? Dove?

You certainly couldn't call the Britten Norman Islander a failure, although you could call it noisy, and slow. It is still in production after 40 years (and still noisy), and nothing else will do the job.

[Blacksheep]

On UK home leave, gazing out of my daughter's living room window I see the remains of what was once the De Havilland factory at Hatfield. Its now an odd combination of Booker warehouses, housing estate and university campus. Beside the shiny new 'T-Mobile' office blocks along Comet Way, the old De Havilland design offices still stand - the exterior is listed, as is the main gate. The Trident assembly building is also grade three listed, but in danger of falling down. Sad.

But the aircraft that were designed and built there were certainly not failures. Not such a great success as the B727 perhaps, but penetrating the US market was always a dodgy business. 'Free Trade' is merely an illusion, mealy mouthed words - the US has so many invisible trade barriers.

Brooklands is in much the same state as Hatfield but the VC10 is still in service and as beautiful as the day she made her maiden flight on 29th June 1962, almost forty three years ago - the RAF are still flying some of their originals, thirty nine years since they were delivered.

Hardly a failure.

[Unwell_Raptor]

Don't forget that in the Forties Fifties and Sixties Britain's two airlines were nationalised, and the wartime culture of government control over aviation was still visible. Airliners were designed for our colonial routes, sometimes making them over-engineered for the really dense profitable routes. While Comet 4s departed Heathrow at a huge climb angle, the early 707s just about scraped over the fence, because Boeing didn't have to design for hot-and-high colonial routes.

Governments are generally very bad at running aviation.

[Parapunter]

Funnily enough BS, the view from my folks' house is of the same aiirfield from the north side. I spent many happy hours as a child watching the 146 on trial in it's light green straight off the line colours. I would like to kknow how many of those have been sold in the hairdryer & other variants.

[Rollingthunder]

Governments are generally very bad at running aviation

Hear, hear.


Speaking for the Canadian aviation industry - Avro Arrow and Avro Jetliner.


As reported in the Funk & Wagnalls "Year Book for 1948" under First Jet Transport: "Scheduled for flight test early in 1949 was the first aircraft designed from scratch as a jet-propelled transport. It is the Avro XC-102, designed and built by Avro Canada of Toronto in collaboration with engineers of Trans-Canada Airlines. Cost of the project are shared by the Canadian government and the manufacturer. The XC-102 is a low-wing, all metal monoplane with pressurized cabin and tricycle landing gear. It is designed to accommodate 40 passengers and a crew of three and is expected to cruise at 430 mph at 35,000 ft. Gross weight is 52,500 lb. Power plant consists of four Rolls-Royce Derwent II turbojets providing 14,000 lb. static thrust output. The engines are grouped in pairs on either wing panel."


Though the Avro Jetliner was just 13 days behind the British Comet, it was years ahead of the Boeing 707, the Jetliner did not have the problems of the Comet and when you look at it you must ask why did Canada not back this great aircraft! If Avro had not fallen behind on the CF-100 production line and if the Korean war not been going on we may still have Jetliners flying today, but the story of the Jetliner is much like the story of the Avro CF-105 Arrow -- it is the story of broken dreams and lost opportunities

The C-102 had been designed to the Trans Canada Airline requirment agreed in 1946, which called for a 36 seat aircraft with a cruising speed of 425 miles per hour, a "still-air" range of 1,200 miles, an average distance between stops of 250 miles, with 500 miles as the longest leg requiement. Alllowances were specified as 45 minutes stacking and flight time to a 120-mile alternate airport. Headwind was to be taken as 20 mph average, with 40mph maximum.


The Jetliner was built during the daytime, tested at night. Once in the wooden mockup stage, Jim Floyd said, "That nose just won't do." So they sawed it off, and built another within a week.

The first prototype, CF-EJD-X christened the Jetliner, first flew 10 August 1949, just 25 months after the design of the Derwent-engined version was started! The crew consisted of Avro UK Chief test pilot Jimmy Orrel; Avro Canada Chief Test Pilot Don Rogers; and flight engineer Bill Baker. The first flight was without any problems and the only problem in over 500 hours of flight occured on the second flight (16 August 1949) when the aircraft had to make an emergency belly-landing because the main gear would not extend (the damage was so minor that the aircraft was flying within three weeks).

By December 1950 the Jetliner had reached 39,800 feet and had exceeded 500 mph in level flight!

Howard Hughes was so impressed with the Jetliner that he wanted to manufacture it under license at Convair and use it on TWA routes, but the U.S. government would not agree to Convair devoting effort and space to a civil project in view of the Korean crisis.

The Jetliner never did go into commercial use but was used as the aerial survey & photo platform for the CF-100 project, as orders were never placed, construction on the partially built second prototype was abandoned. On 10 December 1956 the Jetliner was ordered destroyed, and after contacting the National Aviation Museum turned up no interest in obtaining the aircraft due to a lack of space, the Jetliner was cut up on the 13th of December 1956 with only the cockpit section surviving (in the Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa).

[IFTB]

S'cuse me fellows, before you get too carried away, the tread title is English built airliners........
If you now gonna mention Jetstreams and the like you are guilty of thread creep cause most of them was built in Scotland and not England!


Or did unmanned transport mean British built airliners?

[Kolibear]

if 236 BAC 1-11 are "a total failure", Iwonder what consititutes a success.

I read somewhere that 1-11s were designed and manufactured for use in Europe and where corrosion-proofed to cope with the conditions. An inspection of a B737 & 1-11 of identical ages woulds reveal that the 737 would require extensive re-skinning due to condensation whereas the 1-11 might require a flick over with a duster.

[skianyn vannin]

Well how about the 400 or so 146/RJ's built. Hardly a failure. In fact Lufthansa are quoted as saying its the most reliable aircraft they operate. Perhaps thats why they're getting more of them

[Big Tudor]

The reasons behind Concordes (apparent) lack of commercial impact on the aviation market have been discussed at length. However, I don't see how you can say the aircraft was a failure. It operated commercially for 27 years and I believe BA did actually manage to turn some profit from it. It also only ever existed in one version, no need for -100, -200, -300 series. The original was good enough! No other airliner ever had so much public appeal as Concorde, a guarenteed head turner wherever it went. I wonder if we will see such a send off when the B747 is eventually retired fom service.
As for the A380, I have heard that the wing production team at Broughton has been told to slow down as the rest of the manufacturing sites can't keep up with them!

[sammypilot]

Nobody mentioned the shed or the 748 - where would Emerald be without them.

[Piltdown Man]

The British were probably some of the best aircraft designers and builders in the world. Unfortunately, we suffered from government interference in every direction. The government were the specifiers (even when they weren't the customer), the customers, the certification authority and corrupt. Many had also been "got at" by the Americans (and don't forget which bunch of goons gave the Soviets five of the very latest jet engines from Rolls Royce - just so they had something to put in the MIG 15) and had NFI about how a high tech industry should be run. A bit like the current lot really. And, despite that, the Comet, Britannia, VC10, Concorde, Trident, BAC 1-11 were designed, built and flown for many years. We should be proud of what they did do.

We should also take lessons from the French on how to protect our own industries.

[4468]

Should we add to this list the Vulcan, Victor, Canberra, Lightning, and Harrier?

Never mind the WW11 stuff.

Don't see how any of these aircraft could be described as failures!

These, along with the civil aircraft that are the subject of this thread, prove there was no problem manufacturing superb British aeroplanes, the problems are elsewhere!!

Oh, and the TSR2! Incredibly capable, but a victim of politics.

[The SSK]

At the risk of getting flamed...

A former colleage of mine, who had been Chief Pilot for an operator of both Viscounts and One-Elevens, told me once that the Viscount was an absolute dog of an aeroplane, kept aloft only by the excellence of its engines, and the 1-11 was the most over-engineered airliner in history, indestructable but as a result economically uncompetitive.