The Rise and Fall of Mohawk Airlines and Opening the Door for Frank Lorenzo

Robinson DC-3 crew with Robert Peach on the far right

In the days following Pearl Harbor, the US Civil Aeronautics Board suspended all awards for new air services given the wartime situation. However, the CAB soon realized that air services would need to expand the support the growing production effort for the war. On 11 July 1944 the CAB issued an judgement that created a new category of airline called a feeder or local service airline that would funnel passengers and goods from smaller communities to larger cities for connections to the large established trunk airlines of the day like the "Big Four" of United, Eastern, American, and TWA. One of the early pioneers to take advantage of the CAB's decision was an aerial photographer and inventor named C.S. Robinson in Ithaca, New York. His work with aerial photography before the war led him to developed a metal spring like shock mount for his cameras that was superior to the rubber mounts of the day that became hard at high altitude. Robinson's factory to support the war effort was in Teterboro, New Jersey and he commuted between Teterboro and Ithaca in his Fairchild 24. Finding a constant stream of people who wanted to hitch a ride with him to New Jersey, he decided to start his own airline to connect upstate New York to the New York/New Jersey area and on 6 April 1945 Robinson Airlines began airline services from Ithaca and New York City using three Fairchild 24s. With traffic growing, Robinson expanded to larger aircraft and hired pilots as fast as he could to meet demand. One of his new hires was a former Navy patrol pilot and lawyer named Robert Peach. 

Peach was decorated Navy pilot in the Pacific with two Distinguished Flying Crosses and at the time he joined Robinson Airlines, he was finishing law school at Cornell and wanted to get back into flying part-time. With the rapid growth of demand out of Ithaca, Robinson's laid back management style wasn't conducive to a growing airline and the finances according suffered in the immediate years after the end of the Second World War. Edwin Link, the developer of the Link Simulator that was vital to training pilots, had a factory in Binghamton, New York and was willing to invest in Robinson if there was a change of leadership to assure a return on his investment. Link provided the seed money to allow Robinson to upgrade to Douglas DC-3s and by 1952 Robert Peach had risen through the ranks to Robinson to gain the attention of outside investors. He ended up buying Robinson Airlines outright which assured Link's continued investment in the airline. One of his first acts as head of the airline was to hold a contest to rename the airline and that's how it became Mohawk Airlines. 

Robert Peach at the christening of Mohawk's first One-Eleven

Link's investments weren't enough for Mohawk as Peach pushed for an increase in the usual subsidy the CAB gave to local service airlines. It was a role that raised Peach's prominence in the airline community as he advocated for more support for the smaller airlines. In those days, the CAB had a subsidy given to airlines for routes they flew and Peach pushed for the CAB to treat local service airlines like Mohawk on the same basis as the large established trunk airlines. At the time the Eisenhower Administration wasn't too keen on the idea of increasing subsidies to local service carriers, but Peach and the other local service carrier heads had two important allies- one was Donald Nyrop, the head of the CAB at the time (who later became the head of Northwest Airlines) and Texas Democrat Representative Lloyd Bentsen. When the CAB opened up for applications for local service carriers in 1945, certification was provisional. Bentsen's proposed legislation would make certification of the local service carriers permanent, placing them on better footing with the established trunk carriers and opening the door to increased subsidies from the CAB. President Eisenhower signed the bill after it was unanimously passed by both houses of Congress in 1955. 

Mohawk's BAC One-Elevens increased its stature in the industry

Beginning 1962 Mohawk under Peach's leadership grew tremendously. I had previously written about Mohawk's fight to acquire jet equipment in the form of the BAC One-Eleven that culminated in Peach winning the fight and the first Mohawk BAC One-Eleven, christened "Ohio" flew its first revenue services on 25 June 1965. In addition, Fairchild-Hiller FH-227 turboprops were also put into service to replace the piston twins with Mohawk reaching its zenith in 1967 with route awards from the CAB to Detroit, Cleveland and Boston. The floor fell out from underneath Robert Peach and Mohawk Airlines in 1968. On 23 June that year, the BAC One-Eleven "Discover America" crashed on a flight from Elmira, New York, to Washington, DC. The cause was a valve failure in the APU that resulted in an inflight fire that compromised the tail structure. Two weeks later, a new air traffic controllers union called Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) that started in New York City staged a slowdown to protest inadequate staffing and excessive overtime. Working to the letter of the rules, air traffic back up around numerous chokepoints that led into the New York City area. From July to August, the PATCO action proved disastrous to many airlines, but more so to Mohawk given its route structure. Peach even tendered a bill to the FAA for costs incurred during the PATCO slowdown as a protest. In the following year, a general downturn in the economy then hit Mohawk's passenger numbers. By 1970, the nation was in recession and every airline was losing money and this further added to Mohawk's woes. To save costs, many local service carriers were handing off services to smaller cities to commuter airlines with the CAB subsidy "flowing through" from the local service carrier to the commuter airline. Mohawk's rival, Allegheny Airlines, was already doing this with their "Allegheny Commuter" brand. The CAB permitted this as long as the local service airline would step back in should the commuter airline cease services to any of the communities. 

Frank Lorenzo at the time of his takeover of Texas International

At Mohawk, the pilots saw the outsourcing to commuter airlines as a threat to their jobs (some things in the airline industry never change and this is still a contentious issue in airlines today). One minute before midnight on 12 November 1970, the pilots went on strike after the failure of negotiations and Mohawk was essentially shut down as an airline. The debts that Mohawk incurred upgrading to the BAC One-Eleven and FH-227 aircraft were piling up against declining traffic. The pilot's strike was a nail in Mohawk's coffin as the management turned to a small New York City aviation consulting firm to assist with a turnaround. This small firm was Jet Capital, founded in August 1966 by two Harvard business school graduates, Frank Lorenzo and Bob Carney. With a small office in the prestigious Pan Am building in Manhattan, Lorenzo and Carney had a stock offering in January 1970 that netted them $1.5 million in "seed money". They had earlier provided financial consulting to Detroit-based cargo airline Zantop  that got their name out in the industry. Lorenzo met with Robert Peach on numerous occasions and Jet Capital offered Mohawk a restructuring plan that essentially resulted in Lorenzo controlling Mohawk Airlines. At the time, Lorenzo was only 30 years old- and his plan to take over Mohawk was a bit much for the Robert Peach and the board to swallow. With the airlines' fortunes waning quickly, Peach instead allowed his long time rival Allegheny Airlines to purchase Mohawk. By this time the slow slide of Mohawk meant that Peach had less control over Mohawk than what was the case in 1967. On 20 April 1970, he had lunch with Frank Lorenzo thanking him for his services and offer but that the board had decided to sell to Allegheny. After lunch, Robert Peach went home to prepare for a speech he was to give that night, but instead shot himself in the head, the loss of Mohawk too much to bear for him. 

Robert Peach wasn't only airline boss to kill himself after dealing with Lorenzo. That will be the subject of a future post on this blog as we track Frank Lorenzo's rise to prominence in the airline industry. The sale of Mohawk to Allegheny left Jet Capital with its seed money from its stock offering burning a hole in their pockets. Lorenzo came tantalizingly close to getting control of an airline, something he had long wanted since he was a teenager. In 1971, Mohawk wasn't the only airline in need of a financial turnaround. Based in Houston was Texas International and it wasn't long before they engaged Frank Lorenzo's services that year. But you'll have to wait for another blog article to find out how that went.....

Source: Airline Executives and Federal Regulation: Case Studies in American Enterprise from the Air Mail Era to the Dawn of the Jet Age by Walter David Lewis. Ohio State University Press, 2000, pp 295-318. Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos by Thomas Petzinger. Times Business/Random House, 1996, pp 38-43. Photos: Historical Images (historicalimages03 on eBay), Wikipedia, PostcardPost.com

The Early Days of Airbus Industrie and How the A300 Got Its Name

Roger Béteille, father of Airbus Industrie

The roots of the formation of Airbus Industrie are tied more to the abilities of one man more than any other individual in the early history of the Airbus consortium- Roger Béteille. A graduate of the prestigious École Polytechnique, he was the technical director of Sud-Aviation in the mid-1960s. Sud-Aviation produced the Caravelle and it was Béteille who was the director of the jet's flight test program. In postwar Europe prior to the formation of Airbus, the Caravelle was only one of two commercial aircraft programs to make money (the other being the BAC One-Eleven). He also worked closely with Hawker Siddeley on the Concorde program- this was an experience that unique among the French technocrats of the time, gave him a close working relationship and mutual respect of the British aerospace establishment. In the aerospace industry of France in those days, someone of Béteille's skills was unique given his flawless English, the respect afforded by the British engineering staff at Hawker, and his political skills in working with several European nations in the course of his career at Sud-Aviation. 

In the summer of 1966 there were three proposed commercial aviation projects that were commanding the attention of the European industry. The first one was the BAC Two-Eleven, a successor to the successful BAC One-Eleven. That summer BAC was riding high on the success of the One-Eleven which at the time was one of Britain's most successful and profitable aerospace programs. But it was already facing significant competition from the Douglas DC-9 and the Boeing 737 and BAC had been lobbying the British government for support to launch the Two-Eleven which would have been powered by a new engine Rolls-Royce was developing, the RB.211, that would also go to the Lockheed Tristar. The Two-Eleven was a larger development of the One-Eleven that for the most part, was intended to get British European Airways (BEA) to drop its interest in the Boeing 727-200. The problem with BAC was that it was heavily committed to the Concorde program and had little financial resources to devote to the further developing the Two-Eleven which is why they were keen on approximately $100 million in launch funding from the British government. 

Hawker-Breguet-Nord HBN 100

In the previous year (1965), the head of Breguet Aviation, Henri Ziegler (who later became Airbus's first president) had inked an agreement with fellow French firm Nord Aviation and Hawker Siddeley in the UK to jointly work on a widebody twin called the HBN 100 that was largely the product of Hawker's engineers at their Hatfield facility. The HBN 100 was to have two variants, one with a passenger capacity for 225 and a stretched one with a capacity for 260. The planned engines were to be either the Pratt & Whitney JT9D that was under development at the time for the Boeing 747 or the Rolls Royce RB.178 which was a three-shaft demonstrator engine called the "Super Conway" that eventually led to the RB.211. At the same time as the HBN 100, Sud-Aviation (Roger Béteille's firm) was working the Galion which was very similar in layout, appearance and size to the HBN 100. The Sud-Aviation Galion evolved from what had started out as an enlarged Caravelle. 

Sud Aviation Galion

In 1966 Béteille invited his friends from Hawker Siddeley to Sud Aviation's facility in Toulouse to see if the design work on the HBN 100 and the Galion might be aligned towards a common joint project. That invitation for Arthur Howes, who headed the Hawker team, to come to Toulouse is what gave birth to the Airbus. It soon become a joint program with engineers from all the involved companies shuttling down to Toulouse as needed as the designs of the Galion and the HBN 100 were more closely aligned. That December at a meeting in London, France, Great Britain, and West Germany- I'll soon get to how the Germans entered the picture- decided that a single consortium would build a widebody twin. At time time, Concorde had two production lines- one in France and one in the UK, and on top of the financial costs of the program, the duplication of effort was something Roger Béteille wished to avoid so that an attractively priced aircraft could be offered to the world's airlines. It was agreed that in exchange for Rolls Royce developing a new engine for their design, the Sud Aviation Galion would form the baseline design to work from with the HBN 100 being sidelined. 

It was obvious at the time that any joint effort would be spearheaded by Britain and France, the only Western European nations at the time that had the industrial capacity for large commercial aircraft design and production. But the West Germans were keeping an eye on the developments and the use of the name "Airbus" in reference to the nascent project actually came from them. Even though it was twenty years after the end of World War II, the German aircraft industry was still in shambles. Many legendary names like Messerschmitt and Dornier were still around, but even those entities were hollow shells of their former selves. What engineering staff hadn't left Germany after the war debated the future of their industry and decided the future lay in collaboration on a civil aircraft project. The year before Roger Béteille invited the British to meet in Toulouse, seven German aircraft companies (ATG Siebelwerke, Bolkow, Dornier, Flugzeug-union Sud, Hamburger Flugzeugbau, Messerschimitt and VFW) formed Studiengruppe Airbus (the Airbus Study Group) to determine what sort of aircraft the future airline market would need. It was this grouping of German companies that contributed the Airbus name to the young enterprise. It was at the following year's Farnborough Air Show that German participation was formalized. Up to that point, the Germans had been working on their own but it was decided that what the French and British had come up with baselined off the Sud Aviation Galion was a suitable candidate for their contribution to the effort. Officially becoming Airbus, each nation decided that one company from each nation would take the lead for that nation's contribution. Hawker Siddeley would lead the British contribution, Sud Aviation would lead the French contribution and the German Airbus Study Group was reorganized into a formal consortium of their own, Airbus AG, to lead the German contribution. 

But what to name this aircraft? Arthur Howes of Hawker Siddeley was partial to the name "Obelix" which was the giant in the Asterix series of comic books popular in those days. It was apparent, though, that the name had to be something that was essentially neutral to British, French and German interests. One evening at a dinner in Sud Aviation's Paris headquarters the upper level of management at Sud Aviation asked why a name for the aircraft hadn't been found yet. Different ideas were punted about before Howes himself spoke up as a joke and said "I propose we call it the HSA 300" and the room laughed as "HSA" was the initials of Hawker Siddeley Aviation. But Howes continued "H- Hawker Siddeley, S- Sud Aviation, A- Airbus, and 300 because it's a nice round number." As everyone enjoyed Howes' joke, it suddenly donned on him- why don't we call it the A300? 300 is still a nice round number closest to the proposed design's seating capacity and if "A" was used, the aircraft would always appear before Boeing in any alphabetical listing. Howes idea proved popular and the nascent enterprise's new design would be marketed as the Airbus A300.

Further reading on this blog on the early history of Airbus:

How American Airlines Shaped the A300
How Rolls Royce Scuttled British Participation in Airbus

Related reading:
American Airlines Picks the DC-10 (American's pick of the DC-10 is intertwined with the early history of Airbus)

Source: Close to the Sun: How Airbus Challenged America's Domination of the Skies by Stephen Aris. Aurum Press, 2002, pp 6-11. Images: Wikipedia, Air International

How the Boeing 757 Almost Became a Joint US-UK Program

Following the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the Airbus consortium and the A300 program, the 1970s were times of significant uncertainty for the British airframe manufacturers. Some in the British aircraft industry advocated for return to the Airbus consortium, some pushed for an indigenous airframe and yet others suggested joint ventures with other nations, even if that meant working with Europe or even the Americans. The indigenous solution was the least likely of the day in light of the UK government's unwillingness to invest in the promising BAC Three-Eleven program. In 1974 the French laid down the conditions for the return of the UK to Airbus- not only would the UK have to make a substantial contribution to the development and production costs of the A300, but British airlines would also have to purchase the A300 jetliner. It was the low point of relations between the French and British that once rode the wave of cooperation with the Concorde program. Accusations were even aired in the press of the day with each nation belittling the other's aerospace industry. 

Politics complicated the equation with the recession following the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the Arab oil embargo on the West. The West German government called for increase in financial commitment to Airbus as financial austerity in that nation called for a need to decrease the West German government's financial stake to 25% of what it was at the time. The suggested solution was to expand the Airbus consortium to include the UK and Italy to offset domestic decreases in the financial investment in Airbus by the Bonn government. In the UK, the bankruptcy of Rolls-Royce and the difficulties of the Lockheed Tristar program put the preservation of British aviation jobs as a top political priority. In 1976 further consolidation of the British aviation industry took place with the formation of British Aerospace with the merger of BAC and Hawker Siddeley. The new company's priority under the leadership of Lord Beswick was a new commercial airframe. 

At the time the French were holding discussions with McDonnell Douglas on a successor to the Dassault Mercure, the CFM56-powered Mercure 200. However, the leadership of McDonnell Douglas wasn't convinced the Mercure 200 was the aircraft to launch a trans-Atlantic venture. As a result of wanting to see what other European manufacturers had on the table, discussions were also held with British Aerospace. At the time there were several promising designs from Dassault, Aerospatiale, and BAC (which again was looking a new version of the One-Eleven provisionally designated the X-Eleven). Britain at the time was keen on the JET program (Joint European Transport)

In August 1976 a team of BAC/Hawker engineers (now in the employment of the new British Aerospace entity) visited Boeing in Seattle to review the progress on what would be come the Boeing 757. At the time work was taking place on what was provisionally designated the Trident Five which by coincidence shared a lot of features with the Boeing 757. Like the early 757 design that had a T-tail and 727 nose, the Trident Five had a Trident nose and T-tail combined with a stretched fuselage with a moderately swept wing mounting two RB.211 engines in underwing nacelles. Boeing's president at the time, the colorful Tex Boullioun, offered BAe design work on the wing, engines, RB.211 nacelles and landing gear on the 757. In fact, Boeing was willing to even have final assembly of the Boeing 757 in the UK with flight testing taking place there. "I can't understand why any would want final assembly- it's 7% of time spent on the aircraft with 97% of the problems" as Boullion put it to BAe's head, Lord Beswick.

The British investment to the Boeing 757 was less than what the French wanted for re-entry into Airbus and the potential value to British industry was well in excess of US$3 billion. Boeing went as far as to extend an invitation to British subcontractors to visit Seattle and discuss specific areas of involvement. British Airways was already discussing an order for the 757 and it wasn't a state secret that Lord Beswick disliked the French. But once again, politics sidelines the deal. Despite the new RB.211 engine variant for the 757 being key to Rolls-Royce's recovery, the political winds of the day called for cooperation with the Europeans and with Hawker Siddeley designing an all new supercritical wing for the upcoming A310, it was felt at the highest levels of the government to continue along with what Hawker Siddeley had started with Airbus. The UK had joined the European Economic Community in 1973 and a BAe deal with Boeing to design and build the 757 was unacceptable in light of the spirit of the EEC which pushed pan-European business and industrial cooperation.

 

Source: Flight of the Titans: Boeing, Airbus, and the Battle for the Future of Air Travel by Kenny Kemp. Virgin Books, 2006, p100-106.

The Genesis of the Airbus A320

As far back as the late 1960s while the Airbus Industrie was still a start up finalizing the design of the A300 was there a realization among the major airframe manufacturers of Europe that there would be a need for a single-aisle aircraft to replace the aging fleets of BAC One-Elevens, Tridents, and Caravelles. A multitude of designs emerged from the various companies as there was a common desire for a "European" competitor to the highly successful Douglas DC-9 and Boeing 737 airliners. By the new decade, only France and the UK had the industrial capacity and expertise in putting a such an aircraft into service, but the UK was reeling from not just the withdrawal from the Airbus consortium, but the eventual cancellation of the BAC Three-Eleven project that caused the UK to withdraw from Airbus in the first place. France was putting its weight behind the Dassault Mercure, but the devaluation of the US dollar, the increase in the price of oil following the 1973 Yom Kippur War and Arab oil embargo and the short range of the Mercure (at full payload it was barely a 1000 miles) meant that the Mercure wasn't the aircraft the airline industry wanted at the time. BAC found itself reliant on new versions of the BAC One-Eleven, the 475 and 500 variants, but even these designs were failing miserably against Boeing and McDonnell Douglas on the world market. 

At the 1971 Paris Air Show BAC announced the QSTOL (Quiet Short Take Off/Landing) airliner which looked like a scaled up, wide-body version of the later BAe-146 airliner. But BAC lacked the financial capital to commit the QSTOL to production and the UK government, smarting after the cancellation of the BAC Three-Eleven and the bankruptcy of Rolls-Royce, was hesitant to fund the launch of the QSTOL and project died quietly that year. In February of the following year BAC formed a consortium with MBB of West Germany and Saab-Scania of Sweden to develop the Europlane with the realization that a joint venture was the only way to secure the financing to launch production of any new jetliner. CASA of Spain joined later than year and at the 1972 Farnborough Air Show, the Europlane was announced only to be redesigned for the 1973 Paris Air Show as a CF6/RB.211 rear twinjet with a T-tail that borrowed heavily from the BAC Three-Eleven design. But politics intervened- with MBB heavily committed to the A300 program, Aerospatiale saw the Europlane as distracting MBB from full commitment to Airbus Industrie. Eventually, the Europlane, too, died quietly. 

But while the Europlane venture was active, Hawker Siddeley formed a rival team called CAST (Civil Aircraft Study Team) with VFW-Fokker and Dornier to look into a family of aircraft to compete with Europlane. CAST got off the ground in 1972 and though design studies never got as far as Europlane did, one design did emerge that was a single-aisle twin with underwing engines. At the 1974 Farnborough Air Show, the Group of Six was announced- a new consortium to replace both Europlane and CAST with both BAC and Hawker Siddeley, Aerospatiale, both Dornier and MBB, and VFW-Fokker. The Group of Six combined the work of Europlane and CAST into a new project that featured two designs- a 200 seater designated Type A and a 110+ seater designated Type B. The Type A design became the Airbus A310. With the entry of Dassault into the consortium it became the Group of Seven. The British offered new variants of the both Trident and One-Eleven and the French offered two designs, the Aerospatiale A200 and the similar looking Dassault Mercure 200 with CFM56 engines. 

This attempt at the Type B from the Group of Seven ended when the French insisted upon a lead role and Dassault broke away to pursue a joint venture with McDonnell Douglas based on the Mercure 200 design. That effort also failed due to issues of design leadership between the two companies and with the nationalization of the BAC in 1977 to form British Aerospace, the new BAe, needing a new cornerstone in the commercial market, abandoned further development of versions of the One-Eleven and joined forces with Airbus that year to develop an all-new 150-seat single-aisle aircraft under the program name of JET (Joint European Transport). BAe was offered a lead role in JET with final assembly in the UK provided the British returned to Airbus Industrie. JET was made up of British Aerospace (BAe), with Airbus being represented by MBB, VFW-Fokker, and Aerospatiale. Hawker Siddeley, now part of BAe, led the design effort for JET and created JET1, a 136-seater, and JET2, a 163-seater. Both aircraft were influenced by Aerospatiale's own previous A200 design. Both designs were powered by the GE/SNECMA CFM56 engine and early on a decision was made for a fuselage diameter larger than that of the Boeing 727/737 to allow a more comfortable six-abreast seating arrangement than that of the Boeing jets. After discussion with potential airline customers, JET1 was dropped and efforts were focused on JET2. 

In 1978 JET2 was formalized with BAe being responsible for lead design and final assembly in the UK and Airbus Industrie responsible for coordinating BAe's European partners. In the following year the UK returned to the Airbus consortium and curiously, the JET2 team was relocated to Toulouse, France and in 1980 JET2 was redesignated under the SA (Single Aisle) designator with SA1, SA2, and SA3 being various lengths of the JET2 design.

At the same time that JET2 was moved to Toulouse, Delta Air Lines issued its "Delta III" requirement for a 150-seater with 50% of the fuel burn of the Boeing 727 that formed the bulk of Delta's US domestic fleet. Keen to enlarge its market share in the United States, Airbus consulted with Delta on the the Delta III specifications and focused much of the SA work around Delta's requirements. This aircraft was finalized in 1984 and launched by Airbus Industrie as the A320. The UK government and the British aircraft industry unions pushed hard to have A320 final assembly moved back to the UK, but the increased financial commitment Airbus required to establish final production of the A320 in the UK met with disapproval by the British Parliament and A320 assembly remained where it is to this day at Toulouse. 

Ironically Delta never ended up ordering the A320 despite its needs having shaped the A320's design significantly. Much in the same way American Airlines shaped the A300 design nearly 15 years earlier, it was only years later after the A320 program was well-established that Delta ended up operating the A320, but not as a customer but as the merger partner with Northwest Airlines in 2009 which itself had a substantial A320 fleet as well as the shorter A319. 

Source: Stuck on the Drawing Board: Unbuilt British Commercial Aircraft Since 1945 by Richard Payne. Tempus Publishing, 2004, p162-175.

Although progressively improved and more powerful versions of the Bristol Olympus jet engine powered the Avro Vulcan bomber, there were also other versions of the Olympus destined for other aircraft that made their initial flights on specially-converted Vulcan testbed aircraft. In addition, other similarly-equipped Vulcans served to flight test other engines during their development cycles as well.

The first engine to be flight tested on the Vulcan wasn't an Olympus variant, though. That honor goes to the Rolls-Royce Conway low-bypass turbofan. The first prototype Vulcan, tail number VX770, was retrofitted with four Conway engines in 1956 and delivered to Rolls-Royce for the start of the Conway flight test program in August 1957. Unfortunately, VX770 was lost during a Battle of Britain flying display at RAF Syterston in September 1958 when the maneuvers it was performing overstressed the airframe, resulting in the loss of the crew. A second Vulcan bomber, XA902, was then selected to undergo conversion with the Conway engines to replace VX770. The conversion work began at Avro's facilities in December 1958 and was completed in July 1959. The Conway engines used were the Conway 11 engines (RAF designation Conway Mk.102 and 103) which were destined for use on the Handley Page Victor B.2, an upgraded version of the original Victor B.1 model.

The Conway test program called for the engines to be run at cruise power at 40,000 feet- however, at that power setting, the Conway 11s were more powerful than the Olympus engines of the Vulcan and the testbed would have easily exceeded the Vulcan's maximum speed and overstressed the airframe! As a result, the Conway 11 engines had to be operated at lower thrust settings similar to what was used on BOAC's Boeing 707-430 jetliners. It was found that two Conways could be operated at cruise settings as long as the other two engines were run at lower settings. Given that the prototype Vulcan VX770 that was lost wasn't as structurally strong as XA902, it became possible to complete the Conway flight test program.

With the Conway test program complete in 1961, XA902 was then converted to take Rolls-Royce Spey engines on the inboard positions while retaining the Conway 11 engines on the outboard positions. It made its first flight in this configuration in October 1961 to support the Spey development for its use on De Havilland DH.121 Trident, the BAC One-Eleven, the Blackburn Buccaneer S.2 and the Hawker Siddley Nimrod. XA902 would be retired from service in 1963.

In 1962, another early-mark Vulcan B.1 was taken from service to test the Olympus 22R engine that was destined for the BAC TSR.2. Vulcan XA894 was modified with a large ventral nacelle with bifurcated intake on each side of the nose landing gear. Conversion work on XA894 began at Filton in 1960 and it made its first flight with the much more powerful Olympus 22R in February 1962 in support of the TSR.2 development program. In December of that year during a ground run test, an uncontained turbine blade failure resulted in a fire that destroyed XA894. No replacement was needed, though, as the Olympus 22R had completed enough of the needed test points for the TSR.2 program.

In 1964, another Vulcan was pulled from service to serve as an engine testbed, this time it was tail number XA903 which arrived at Filton in January of that year for conversion work to flight test the Olympus 593 in support of the development of the BAC/Aerospatiale Concorde. Using a similar ventral nacelle as had been used on XA894 in the Olympus 22R flight test program, this time instead of a bifurcated intake a straight-through intake was used that resembled a single-engine Concorde engine nacelle. A retractable spray bar was also fitted ahead of the intake and water from a bomb bay water tank was used to test water ingestion and icing conditions on the Olympus 593 engine. The first flight was made with the Concorde engine in September 1966 and the test program finally ended in 1971 with over 400 hours of flight time. With the Olympus 593 at full power, the Vulcan testbed could still fly and maneuver with its own four engines at idle!

Testbed work would continue for XA903, though. In August of 1971 XA903 was flown to Marshalls of Cambridge for conversion work to support the development of the Rolls-Royce/Turbo Union RB.199 engine for the Panavia Tornado program. The ventral nacelle used for the Olympus 593 program was modified by Marshalls to not only accommodate the RB.199 engine, but to replicate the starboard side of the Tornado's fuselage. The first flight with the RB.199 was made in April 1973 and one of the most unusual aspects of the RB.199 flight test program was that the ventral nacelle was even equipped with a Mauser 27mm cannon that would be used on the Tornado. The cannon's location in relation to the intake replicated its location on the Tornado so that gun gas ingestion trials could be carried out. The firing trials were carried out at Boscombe Down but weren't done while airborne- XA903 remained on the ground and firing butts were used while Rolls-Royce and Turbo Union engineers analyzed the engine's performance as gun gas was drawn into the intake. A total of 285 flight hours were accumulated with the RB.199 on XA903 when the Vulcan was finally retired in February 1979, the last early-mark Vulcan B.1 to have flown.

Source: Avro Vulcan- Britain's Famous Delta-Wing V-Bomber by Phil Butler and Tony Buttler. Midland Publishing/Aerofax, 2007, p70-73.

Mohawk Airlines Gets the BAC One-Eleven

When the BAC One-Eleven was developed, it faced competition from two other short-haul twinjets in the form of the Sud-Aviation Caravelle and the Douglas DC-9 Series 10. And further ahead lay Boeing's 737-100/200. BAC's sales team as soon as the One-Eleven was launched wasted no team in getting themselves set up in the United States, keen to follow on the success of the Viscount turboprop in the world's most lucrative air travel market. However, the BAC sales team found opposition not from the airlines, but from a completely different quarter.

Shortly after the launch of the One-Eleven letters of intent came in from local service carriers Ozark Air Lines (five aircraft) and Frontier (six aircraft). However, the US airlines of the day were tightly regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board which not only set fares and routes, but also administered government subsidies to maintain "competition". The local service carriers of the day were particularly dependent on the government subsidies for what were usually uneconomic short-haul routes to smaller cities. In the case of Frontier and Ozark, the CAB felt that operating pure jets would require increased subsidies and threatened to withdraw financial support. As a result, Ozark and Frontier had to abandon their plans to buy the BAC One-Eleven.

The following year in 1962 Bonanza Air Lines signed a letter of intent for three One-Elevens. This time the CAB refused to guarantee Bonanza's loan and the purchase had to be canceled. When Bonanza was able to later on order the Douglas DC-9 Series 10 (as well as Ozark), accusations of protectionism flew from the British government and press.

Though success came with Braniff's order for six One-Elevens and options on six more (Braniff was much less dependent on government subsidies), the next local service carrier to order the One-Eleven, Mohawk Air Lines, was determined to make a case for operating the jet. When Mohawk ordered four One-Elevens, the CAB again tried to intervene and prevent Mohawk from getting jet equipment. The CAB stated in their denial that Mohawk's Convair twins carried on average 20 passengers and at least 30-35 passengers would be needed on the One-Eleven to operate without an increased subsidy.

Mohawk's president, Robert Peach, wasn't going to accept the CAB's verdict. In a very detailed rebuttal and analysis written by Peach himself, he pointed out that the CAB had just awarded Mohawk route extensions as well as nonstop route authorities between major cities in the Northeast that brought Mohawk in direct competition with the trunk carriers like American and United. Peach argued that modern equipment was needed to compete on these routes and that failure to acquire jets would mean an increase in subsidy would be needed for Mohawk to maintain those very routes.

Peach then detailed the rationale for the One-Eleven purchase, showing that operating the One-Eleven over a 200-mile route would break even at a load factor of 46%, something he pointed out that Mohawk had easily done historically. Mohawk wasn't getting jets for sake of getting jets, Peach concluded, the airline was doing it to meet economic and customer demand for modern aircraft on its route network.

It was one of the rare victories against the CAB that increased Robert Peach's stature amongst the other local service carriers. The CAB conceded and Mohawk operated their first BAC One-Eleven service on 15 July 1965 between Utica, New York, and New York City.

Source: BAC One-Eleven by Malcom L. Hill (Crowood Aviation Series). The Crowood Press Ltd, 1999, p25-27.