Changing Altitude

The fate of Britain's unhappy aircraft industry involves not only 250,000 jobs and $400 million in exports but also the pride of a nation. The British, who built the heroic Spitfire and the world's first commercial jets, sometimes seem to feel the decline of their aviation more strongly than the decline of their Empire. The ominous signs have been obvious for a long time--the bad luck of the Comet, the financial losses of the Britannia, and now the lack of a market for the long-range, rear-engined VC 10. Though popular with passengers, the VC 10 is costlier to operate than the competitive Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8, and Britain has failed so far to sell a single one of them outside the Commonwealth.

Britain long ago gave up the idea of any serious role in missilery and space, and last year the Labor government canceled three military aircraft programs. Last week the government beat a still more painful retreat. In the biggest postwar Royal Air Force order, Britain announced it would buy 400 military planes over the next four years--but 250 will be Lockheed, McDonnell and General Dynamics aircraft (see THE WORLD). The British will build parts for some of them.

It is tempting to write off Britain's aircraft industry as dying, but that probably would be a mistake. In their strategy for survival, the British are gliding into a new, temporarily lower altitude --and hope to climb from there, in cooperation with the Continent.

Alliance with France. For now, they plan to save money by buying advanced military aircraft from the U.S., whose huge production lines permit lower pricing. The 50 swing-wing F-111A fighter-bombers that Britain will buy from General Dynamics at $5,950,000 each are at least $1,000,000 cheaper than anything Britain's much smaller industry could build.

For the longer term, Britain will ally itself with Continental countries, notably France, to build a European aerospace industry that might do battle against the Americans. The chief hope is the Anglo-French Mach 2.2 Concorde, which is likely to be the world's first supersonic airliner. It is slated to go into service in 1971 or 1972, at least two years ahead of the U.S. supersonic liner. Production of an Anglo-French prototype is on schedule, though development costs have risen from $500 million to more than $1 billion. Beyond that, there has been talk about jointly built military craft, and the British, French and Germans have agreed to make a subsonic, short-range "airbus" that would carry more than 200 passengers and go into service in 1972.

Merger Drive. Europeans are not likely to see a Siddeley-Messerschmitt or a Rolls-Fiat company for some time, but, mergers within the British aviation industry itself are in the offing. The government hopes to induce a merger between the two big airframe manufacturers, British Aircraft Corp. and Hawker Siddeley, and perhaps even to try to unite the two proud jet engine builders, Rolls-Royce and Bristol Siddeley. The combined companies presumably would be able to lift productivity, which is only one-third as high as in the U.S. aerospace industry, and two-thirds as high as in the French. By combining resources at home and abroad. British planemakers stand a chance of recapturing the secret that has too often eluded them since World War II: how to make the right plane at the right time at the right price.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.