British Air Lines

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25177, 7 May 1947, Page 6

British Air Lines

The decision to abandon the purchase of six American Constellation airliners for the Atlantic and Empire routes of the British Oversea Airways Corporation, reported last week, must have been taken by the British Government with some misgivings and after much anxious weighing of the advantages and disadvantages of the two courses open to it. Both have had their advocates among the experts in Britain. The Government decided as it did, according to Mr John Wilmot, Minister of Supply, because it was unwilling to “ inflict on British avia- “ tion the blow to its prestige and “ development which the Govern“ment felt the purchase of Ameri- “ can aircraft would involve But it is certain that the course taken was made more attractive by the saving of dollars which will result—about 1,000,000 for each Constellation and its spares. The Government can have no illusions about the handicaps which it is thus imposing upon its State-operated overseas air lines in the next few years. Though the financial results of the first year of peace-time operation of the British Oversea Airways Corporation have not been published, they are known to involve a deficit of several million pounds. Every BOAC route except that to New York (which is served by five Constella-. tions) is operated at a heavy loss because the aircraft are mostly makeshift types with uneconomical pay loads and heavy maintenance requirements. Air Commodore L. C. S. Payne, aviation correspondent of the London “Daily Telegraph”, recently estimated that SO airliners comparable with American types could run the services now carried on by BOAC’s diverse fleet of 200 machines, and with only half its present staff of 22.000. He quoted a BOAC official (Mr F. N. Hilliers) as saying that on Australian routes the operating costs of a Lancastrian would be 60 per cent, higher, and of a Hythe flying-boat 234 per cent, higher, than a satisfactory type of airliner. Nor is it likely that the Tudor and Hermes aircraft and Solent flying-boats which Mr Wilmot said it had been decided to use on the main Empire routes for the next few years will be a great improvement; and the date when they will be available is uncertain. The Tudor I was first flown more than a year ago, but apparently “ teething “ troubles ” have prevented its being put into service. The use of flyingboats as a stop-gap will be expensive both in operating costs and in the provision of bases. New Zealand centres, for instance, would be reluctant to spend large sums on the development of flying-boat bases when everything points to landbased aircraft being the long-range craft of the future.

On the credit side of the British Government’s decision, it will encourage an aircraft industry which is feeling its way in an unfamiliar field of production. Before the war British manufacturers produced excellent small and medium-size civil aircraft but had produced nothing comparable with the American machines in the large, long-range class. Britain now plans to enter that field in 1950 or 1951, and it expects to make up the lost ground by exploiting its advanced development of the gas turbine engine. In the meantime British manufacturers can expect to learn something from the operational experience of their own machines on British air routes. The lessons will be lost, or only partly learned, if the British Government does not fortify this recent decision by overhauling the present system of ordering aircraft. The complaint has been made, and with justice, that the users of the machines are the last to have any say in the specifications, since the Ministry of Supply, the Ministry of Civil Aviation, and the Treasury all have power to overrule the corporation. Given the same close cooperation between the manufacturers and the corporation as there was during the war between the manufacturers and the Royal Air Force, there is no reason why the British aircraft industry should not produce civil aircraft comparable with its warplanes.