kenparry:

"He said that the more airframes they sold, the more money the company lost - they were going for below cost"

Taking the nonrecurring development cost as already sunk, one would have to be exceptionally incompetent to sell for less than the recurring cost to build.

"Many/most manufacturers of complete aircraft have suffered financial pain"

Douglas, Convair, Lockheed, Bristol, Sud-Aviation, HP, Northrop, Westland, Canadair................

just recently Boeing, Airbus, HAL, Dassault, Westland..............

name one that HASN'T had financial issues at one time

Obviously having asked the question I don't have an immediate answer - thinking that there maybe existing knowledge out there. Many responses seem to indicate that the data however would be in some way secret but I'm not so sure.

The list price for any aircraft must be broadly known and even if it wasn't at the time I can hardly see why the price of a (say) Vickers Viscount would be kept secret in 2018. Development costs for any project seem to be widely known for many military projects (I'm thinking for example TSR2). I'd have thought this subject of cost v revenues would have had an airing by now but perhaps not.

Rushing to judgement on my part about it being only airliners hence choosing just the the Viscount with the 1-11 146 doing sort of ok and so i must apologise for the 748 omission especially as it always looked a neat business like aircraft and it had decent longevity.

Aircraft manufacturing is as history has demonstrated a risky business to say the least and it is a shame that such incredible engineering and technical skills could seldom earn the rewards they deserve for skill and perseverance .

and it seems yet another consolidation is taking place with boring and AB snapping up ther much smaller rivals to ensure they have a complete range of aircraft from 70 odd to over 400 seats each

Pitts

your problem is who is going to publish the info on Viscount prices in 60 years ago?

You can Google it or you can electronically crawl through "Flight" or similar but you really need the accounts of the sellers - and they have probably been shredded these 30 years

Anyone have a notion how the Scottish Aviation Bulldog and BAe Jetstream 31 programmes faired?

Pittsextra:
I think you are not wasting your time following the Viscount route.
I remember reading that the plan was to price the first 1-11s the same as the last Viscounts. The latter was said to be (but not verified by me) £800000. I can try to find the quote. That would give you a 55 year old price point for prices in pounds Sterling.
You said you're looking to check profitability. Using list prices will obviously overstate profits by such an enormous margin as to make any result meaningless.
Just in case you're not aware, Airbus and Boeing do post current sticker prices on their websites.

I don't have the story on how the sums were done or how the quoted result was arrived at. Your claim might well be true.

Around about 1972 a BAC 1-11 was $2,200,000.
My father, as Flight Shed Senior Inspector, was handing over a new 500srs. to Philippine Airlines one Sunday and was given the cheque for the payment as nobody from the Commercial dept. was working at the weekend. He brought it home and showed it to me.

Just thinking though, there may have been a deposit paid earlier so the total price may be higher.

The Turboprop World-Beater VISCOUNT

Almost at the very end of that page is this:-

So £177m in sales just need to find out how much it cost to design/develop and that would be a starter for ten!

Yes but where did the author get the numbers from? They may be right but how do we know?
We used to be bedevilled by people who believed what they read in books ("it's in print so it must be true") or even in newpapers, but now we have the internet in all its uncontrolled splendour!

Allan. We used to be bedevilled by people who believed what they read in books.
Bedevilled? That was your trade, brochuremanship !

Just back from FNAC with a couple of printer Ink Cartridges.

Now I know where Hewlett Packard got the idea from....

Yes I take your point but lets put this in context.

First off this was just a "thinking out loud" type question... "Oh I wonder what the most "profitable" aircraft were"...

Then I guess one takes the numbers in good faith unless someone suggests otherwise.

Ultimately it is just a bit of fun but I am surprised that nobody has ever really looked at this before.

Spitfire must have made a few bob for Vickers?

"Ultimately it is just a bit of fun but I am surprised that nobody has ever really looked at this before."

I suspect there are a few PhD studies out there but probably people started and got so depressed they just gave up

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...dustry-211152/

is a grim retelling of how we arrived here

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...bility&f=false

lists a lot of historic articles