B.E.A. Threatening To Buy U.S. Planes

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31346, 17 April 1967, Page 8

B.E.A. Threatening To Buy U.S. Planes

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, April 16.

A major British airline is threatening to “buy American” if it cannot get the plane it wants from English manufacturers.

By coincidence the American plane it regards as an alternative to what it really wants is the Boeing 727-200, a larger version of the 737 sought by New Zealand’s National Airways Corporation. Sir Anthony Milward, chairman of British European Airways, was reported as saying that the airline would place a £llO million order in America if the British Government did not decide within the next two months to back the development of a new British jetliner. He said every week that went by drove B.E.A. nearer to buying Boeings.

The airline had asked to be. allowed to buy 30 190-seat

British Aircraft Corporation 2-11 jetliners which, with an option on 10 more and spares, could mean the biggest single order offered to the British aircraft industry.

“I have only one job and that is to make B.fiA.;a commercial proposition. I have said to the Government: If you produce an airbus iir 1975 with the right operating costs We will buy it,” Sir Anthony Milward said. ' “But if the Government cannot afford to back both the airbus and the B.A.C. 2-11 I will have to say there is no alternative but to buy the Boeing 727-200 aircraft. “If we have to change over to American aircraft that is where we stay.”