Out with a Roar

The man who wrestled BOAC, Britain's state-owned airline, out of its postwar tail spin stepped away from the controls last week with a blast at "irksome political interference." After turning a 1948 loss of $30 million into a 1954 profit of $4,000,000, Sir Miles Thomas, 59, quit as BOAC chairman and chief executive.

Sir Miles had fought bureaucratic red tape and Britain's planemakers throughout his eight years at BOAC. He stirred up storms by pruning BOAC's staff from 24,000 to 18,000. And he galled Britons by replacing British planes with U.S. Boeing Stratocruisers and Lockheed Constellations. Recently, he ordered Douglas DC-7Cs as substitutes for de Havilland's ill-fated Comet jet liner. Said Sir Miles last week: "I was tired of being the whipping boy of some politicians. You can either have a competitive airline using the best available equipment, or you can have a shopwindow for British aircraft. But if you choose the second alternative, you must not expect to make a profit." For too long, said he, Britain's aircraft industry has been "looking too hard at the stars and tripping over its own feet," has done too much "talking about tomorrow's jam instead of concentrating on today's bread and butter. The time has come to build more aircraft and fewer models. In my opinion, American jets will not be operating until well into the 19603, by which time the Britannia turboprop and the Comet IV will have been operating for years."

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