Birth of the Airbus Family: The A310

The Airbus A310 prototype takes flight on 3 April 1982.

In the days following the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur War in Middle East in October that year, the oil producing nations of the Middle East responded to American materiel support of Israel with an oil embargo that sparked a worldwide economic crisis as the price of oil abruptly shot upwards from $3/barrel to over $12/barrel in a short period of time. As a result, the airline industry worldwide embraced fuel efficiency as the new driver for future aircraft designs. While there were high-bypass ratio turbofans that powered the new widebody designs that were entering service (Boeing 747, Douglas DC-10, and Lockheed L-1011 Tristar), turbojets and low-bypass ratio turbofans were still commonplace in the short to medium-haul fleets worldwide. Many airlines indicated to the major manufacturers that there was a market need for a fuel-efficient aircraft in the 150-200 seat range over short to medium haul ranges. Of the big three manufacturers in the United States who dominated the world commercial airliner market, Boeing's plans were the most ambitious with the launch of not just one aircraft, but two aircraft with a common cockpit with the Boeing 757 and 767. It was in many ways the biggest gamble Boeing had ever undertaken, bigger than building the Dash 80 demonstrator that led to the 707 and even bigger than the launch of the 747 ten years earlier. News of Boeing's plans put pressure on Airbus Industrie to respond as all it had produced by that point was the A300. While there were a range of A300 variants with varying engines, payload and fuel capacities, they were all still essentially the same aircraft and hardly a family of aircraft. Two of the primary founders of Airbus and their heads, Roger Béteille (technical director) and Henri Ziegler (general manager), strongly believed that Airbus needed to emulate Boeing's strategy of building a whole family of different aircraft for different markets if the whole enterprise was to have a future beyond the A300. Boeing's idea for commonality with the 757 and 767 designs resonated with the Airbus team who was commonality among varied designs as a way of proving value to the airline customers, not to mention it would be a strong incentive for an Airbus customer to stay loyal to Airbus in the future.

Part of the problem Béteille and Ziegler faced was that most of the Airbus consortium partners saw the A300 as the end result of cooperation instead of the starting point for future cooperation. A lot of that was driven by the atmosphere of fiscal austerity of the 1970s in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis- Airbus' partner nations were hesitant of putting up more money into the venture, particularly when Airbus was still a bit player on the world market despite the success of the A300. In 1978, for example, Airbus delivered 15 aircraft, all of them A300s. That same year Boeing delivered 203 aircraft across three product lines- the 727, 737, and 747. In fact, it wouldn't be until 2003 that Airbus would deliver more aircraft in a single year than Boeing. When Boeing launched the 757 and 767 programs, they were also capitalizing on market vulnerabilities experienced by McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed in the wake of their trijet programs- Airbus wasn't really on Boeing's radar screen at the time. Despite the market effects on McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed, they were still delivering aircraft as well which were entering service on top of Boeing's numbers. You can imagine what a tall order it was for Béteille and Ziegler to convince the Airbus consortium partners that there was value and potential for the long haul beyond the A300 at a time when they were only building less than 5% of the world's commercial jetliners. It wasn't until mid-1975 that the board of Airbus Industrie endorsed the plan for a family of aircraft- and that endorsement is a testament to the persuasive powers of Roger Béteille and Henri Ziegler. In his book Close to the Sun: How Airbus Challenged America's Dominance of the Skies, author Stephen Aris calls that 1975 decision as the most critical decision in Airbus' history. If Airbus failed, then it was only one aircraft, the A300, that failed. But if they became successful, then that one aircraft wouldn't be enough. The leadership of Airbus Industrie by that point had proven themselves remarkably adept in getting the A300 into production and to market while balancing the interests of the partner nations in the consortium. 

Winning a Swissair order was a strategic priority for Airbus

With the backing of the consortium to expand the Airbus product line beyond the A300, the next task at hand was to determine the configuration of the new addition. The first iteration dated back to the oil crisis of 1973 when A300 sales were near dormant (only four A300s were delivered in 1974). In response to what was seen as an evolving market for something smaller than the A300, what was designated the B10 was a minimum-change variant of the A300 that had a shorter fuselage but the same wing and empennage as the larger aircraft. However, the B10 proposal created a significant amount of discord at all levels of Airbus as the consortium partners argued whether it was needed or not. Lufthansa in particular was keen for a smaller A300 derivative and this had gotten the support of Swissair. In those days, Swissair was one of those flagship customers every commercial airframe builder wanted as a customer. They were a tough customer known to be one of the most difficult airlines to negotiate with- but a Swissair order was badge of prestige for any commercial aircraft design and with Swissair now allying with Lufthansa on interest for a smaller A300 derivative, winning Swissair as a launch customer soon became one of Airbus' primary strategic goals. 

By the time the two airlines were briefed on the B10 proposal, Boeing was well on its way to launching the 757/767 program and compared to those aircraft, the B10 had no fans with either Lufthansa or Swissair. Their objections of the proposal stemmed from two points- the first one was that by the time of proposed service entry, the B10 design would be based on technology and a design that was at least a decade old and more importantly, it had a worse payload fraction than the A300. The payload fraction is one way of measuring an aircraft's efficiency- how much payload can it carry compared to its weight. Since the B10 design had a shorter fuselage married to the A300's wings, it had less passengers (therefore less revenue) to offset the costs of carrying a heavier wing structure. This is one of the reasons why shrinks of commercial airframes tend to not do well in the market- like the A318, 737-500, or 747SP, for example. If the B10 proposal was ever going to get off the drawing board, it needed a lighter wing and whole host of improvements over the A300 to win over the airlines who were being offered the latest in technology with the 757/767. In an unusual twist of history, the prospect of trans-Atlantic cooperation offered an potential answer to Airbus' dilemma. Why not combine Airbus' growing widebody fuselage expertise with the technology and industrial muscle of the United States? The first feelers on such an idea came from McDonnell Douglas in the spring of 1975 for a joint venture for a 200-seat design called the DC-X-200. McDonnell Douglas had long been considering a twin-engine version of the DC-10 and the DC-X-200 was the latest iteration along those lines. However, once discussions moved beyond engineering to management, the talks quickly collapsed. That summer another offer came from Boeing who thought there would be some synergies with the B10 proposal and the 767 program. Whether Boeing was serious or just trying to distract Airbus is still a source of debate to this day, but the proposal would have consisted of the A300-based fuselage and 767 wings and empennage. At the end of the day, however, Airbus lost interest as it became apparent that they would end up a Boeing subcontractor in the joint venture. 

Lufthansa was an early A300 customer who drove the design of the A310.

Still keen to win over Lufthansa and Swissair, Airbus decided to follow as Boeing had done with the 757/767 and go with a two-crew flight deck and CRT displays. That would prove to be a relatively easy step to take but it still provoked the ire of the pilots' unions of several European carriers. The need for a new wing, however proved to continue to be problematic. I had posted previously that it had taken the personal intervention of a German politician, Franz Josef Strauss, to fund the A300's wing development and construction by Hawker Siddeley as a result of the British government's withdrawal from the Airbus consortium. Hawker was still the center of the most advanced wing design work in Europe and was in the process of merging with several other entities to form British Aerospace (BAe). With British Aerospace being majority owned by the government, there was considerable anguish at Airbus as to whether or not BAe would participate in the B10 project given the British pull out of the Airbus consortium in 1969.  When Hawker elected to remain an Airbus participant despite the pullout, they had absorbed a portion of the costs of wing development. Now that Hawker was part of BAe, no one was sure that the new entity was willing to front such costs again for the B10 project. Airbus decided at that point to turn to its partners for a wing design- Aerospatiale and VFW-Fokker each submitted wing designs and Roger Béteille was sure that whoever was chosen, it would be the end of Airbus as the other partner would feel jilted. As it turned out, neither was chosen- the German design was aerodynamically superior but the French design was structurally superior. A joint-wing design center was established to combine their efforts and word of this got back to BAe quite quickly that their replacement was in the works. 

The exact political machinations in the UK that resulted will be the subject of a future blog article, but they were contentious with pro-Airbus factions in the British government and those who favored a joint-venture with Boeing on the 757. At the end of the day, however, BAe did end up designing and fabricating the wing which was not only lighter, but was of supercritical section which made it not only more aerodynamically efficient but also offset the smaller size with a deeper airfoil section which offered more fuel capacity. Getting the wing also meant that the British eventually rejoined the Airbus consortium with a 20% share. On 9 June 1978, Lufthansa and Swissair issued a joint specification for the new aircraft and within a month announced intentions of placing orders for what was launched as the Airbus A310. On 15 March 1979, Swissair announced its launch order for 10 aircraft and 10 options with plans to use the A310 as a replacement for its legacy DC-9 fleet on its major intra-European routes. Lufthansa quickly followed with an order for 10 aircraft and soon after Air France and Iberia also placed orders, assuring the production and success of the A310. When the A310 prototype flew, it would later wear Swissair's colors on the right side and Lufthansa's colors on the left side. Many of the advances of the A310 were later incorporated into an upgrade of the A300, the A300-600. 

Further reading: 

How American Airlines Shaped the A300

How Rolls Royce Scuttled British Participation in Airbus

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

Franz Josef Strauss: The Bavarian Politician Who Saved Airbus
How a Lot of Airbus Jets Were Born on Boeing Wings

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. Agate Books, 2002, pp 90-95. Photos: Wikipedia

How a Lot of Airbus Jets Were Born on Boeing Wings

A340 fuselage barrel being loaded into 377SGT No. 3

With the formation of Airbus Industrie and the launch of the Airbus A300 jetliner, the different consortium partners finalized their workshare of the project- the tail section was the responsibility of the Spanish, the British were responsible for the wings, the Dutch fabricated all the moving surfaces of the wing, the Germans built the forward and aft fuselage along with the top section of the center fuselage, and the French were responsible for the nose, flight deck, control systems, the lower section of the center fuselage and final assembly of the A300. Splitting up the construction of a commercial aircraft in this manner wasn't necessarily new to the aerospace industry- after all, Boeing had about 65% of the Boeing 747 farmed out to various subcontractors with over 20,000 companies in just about every one of the fifty US states and some foreign nations. But what was novel in what Airbus was doing was that it was the very heart of the enterprise with the partner nations assuming near-equal risk. This would be how every Airbus jet would be built and each partner nation would build their sections to as near complete as possible. For Boeing, they retained oversight and control over what their 747 subcontractors would be doing and providing. For the A300, each Airbus partner wasn't overseeing each other- they were more or less having to trust that each partner would provide a finished product that met the specifications and could be easily integrated into final assembly in France. This required each firm to work in near-perfect harmony and coordination with the other consortium members. There was no margin for error- it has been said that if a Swiss watch were scaled up to the same diameter as the A300's fuselage, the tolerances on the A300 were much tighter than that of the Swiss watch!

Parts were designed in such a way to facilitate this process, but other steps were necessary for proper coordination. At the Hawker Siddeley plant in the UK that built the wings, for example, they had special jigs that the wings could be "plugged" into that replicated the fuselage center section that they would join up with in the final assembly hall in Toulouse. More difficult was getting each nation to adopt the same production techniques. During the early days, engineers at Airbus joked how easy it was to tell whether a particular join in the aircraft was done by the French or Germans. But it had to work and with great perseverance, the A300 was coming to shape. 

Surprisingly, in the early days of Airbus, the biggest problem they faced in getting the A300 into production was the logistics of having factories in France, Germany, Spain, Great Britain and the Netherlands all separated by significant distances. The straight line distance from Germany's Hamburg production facility to the final assembly hall in Toulouse was 900 miles. It was originally planned that all the large sections would be transported by sea- this was why the German Airbus facilities were in Bremen and Hamburg which had easy sea access and the Hawker facility had good road links to the port at Liverpool. Toulouse, however, is about 100 miles inland with no sea access. The original plan was to transport the fuselage and wing sections up the Garonne River from Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast. Because of the depth of the river and the size of the components, they would only be able to up about 50 miles from Bordeaux at which point the components were transferred to a road convoy- to minimize disruption along the route to Toulouse, it had to be done at night and numerous telephone poles, trees and power lines would have to be relocated. Some of the transport vehicles would be near 100-feet in length and it wasn't long before Airbus officials came to their senses and realized that this was a very inefficient and time-consuming process to get airframe components to final assembly. 

Airbus Skylink, Felix Kracht's solution for Airbus' logistical problem

The A300 production manager was a German engineer named Felix Kracht. Before joining the nascent Airbus in 1968, Kracht had worked on harmonizing production methods and standards on the Franco-German C160 Transall military transport program. About the time that the A300 program had been launched, Kracht was familiar with Aero Spacelines and its founder, Jack Conroy. Aero Spacelines was established by Conroy to convert Boeing 377 Stratocruisers into outsize cargo transports for NASA. Not only did ASI design and convert the aircraft, they also operated the aircraft as well. The first conversion was done in 1962 using a retired Stratocruiser and was called the Pregnant Guppy which transported both Titan II stages for the Gemini program and Saturn stages for the Apollo program. By 1970 a bigger and more capable Guppy had made its first flight- longer and more capacious than any of Conroy's other designs, the new Super Guppy Turbine (377SGT) was turboprop-powered. The first 377SGT made its first flight after conversion on 24 August 1970 and the second 377SGT first flew on 24 August 1972. By this point, however, ASI was in financial trouble and that's where Felix Kracht and Airbus stepped into the picture. He astutely realized its capacious fuselage and swing-nose loading were the perfect solution to the logistical problem of getting large airframe sections to Toulouse for final assembly. In 1970, Kracht had arranged for Airbus to purchase the first 377SGT with delivery in 1971. The purchase deal included a contractual commitment from ASI to build a second 377SGT as a back up for Airbus to serve as a back up for the first 377SGT. With ASI in dire financial straits in 1973 as the Apollo program was winding down, Airbus purchased the second 377SGT built. Plans then evolved once A300 production had been launched for a third and fourth 377SGT to be built for Airbus. By this point ASI was in no position to complete construction of two more aircraft, but they did complete sub-assemblies which were then completed in France. The third 377SGT first flew in 1979 and the fourth and final 377SGT first flew in 1980. 

Operating the Super Guppy fleet wasn't cheap, but in terms of time savings and efficiency, the cost was worthwhile compared to any sea/ground-based transport option. As the battle with Boeing heated up in the late 1970s, Boeing criticized what was called the Airbus Skylink program but Airbus responded by overlying a map of Boeing's subcontractors over a map of the Airbus partners to show the distances flown by the Super Guppies was shorter than the distances from Boeing's subcontractors to final assembly in Seattle. By the 1980s, though, the age of the Super Guppy fleet was becoming a significant cost center for Airbus. In 1991, the French company Aerospatiale and the German company DASA formed a joint enterprise to develop and build a replacement for the venerable Super Guppy fleet, ironically based on the A300. Construction of the Airbus Beluga began in September 1992 with the first flight taking place in 1994. A total of five Belugas have been built with the last one completed in 1999 which allowed for the retirement of the Super Guppy fleet. 

377SGT No. 4, now N941NA operated by NASA

Super Guppy No. 1 was retired in 1996 and resides at the British Aviation Heritage Museum at Bruntingthorpe awaiting proper restoration. Super Guppy No. 2 was also retired in 1996 and is on display at the Airbus facility at Toulouse and is under the care of the group Ailes Anciennes Toulouse ("Toulouse Old Wings"). The Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace at Le Bourget was offered Super Guppy No. 2 initially, but they had to decline on account of space considerations. Super Guppy No. 3 was retired in 1997 and is on display at the Deutsche Airbus facility at Hamburg Finkenwerder, Germany. Super Guppy No. 4, however, continues to earn its keep, but no longer for Airbus. In an International Space Station barter agreement, Super Guppy No. 4 was transferred to NASA in exchange for delivery to the ISS by the Space Shuttle components from the European Space Agency. Now with tail number N941NA, the NASA Super Guppy transported ISS modules destined for in-orbit assembly and currently transports launch payloads. 

As an interesting note on Super Guppy No. 4/N941NA- when Aero Spacelines was building the sub-sections for Airbus, the company found that there were no more spare Boeing 377 Stratocruisers that could be cannibalized to form the lower aft fuselage. The dismantled original Pregnant Guppy that first flew in 1962 was still available and was purchased for its lower aft fuselage which was incorporated into Super Guppy No. 4/N941NA. Now here's what's interesting- the Pregnant Guppy was converted from the third Boeing Stratocruiser prototype that made its first flight in 1948! That means that not just a significant portion of Airbus jets produced made their "first flight" on the third Stratocruiser prototype (so to speak), but so did some of the modules of the ISS. 

Further reading: 

How American Airlines Shaped the A300

How Rolls Royce Scuttled British Participation in Airbus

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

Franz Josef Strauss: The Bavarian Politician Who Saved Airbus

Related reading:

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

Sources: Close to the Sun: How Airbus Challenged America's Domination of the Skies by Stephen Aris. Agate Books, 2002, pp 56-62. "All About Guppys" at www.allaboutguppys.com. Photos: Wikipedia, Airbus.

Franz Josef Strauss: The Bavarian Politician Who Saved Airbus

Franz Josef Strauss in the cockpit of an Airbus

The early history of Airbus Industrie was very rocky indeed and I had posted previously how the failure of the planned Rolls Royce RB.207 engine nearly killed the A300 before it even flew. The breach of trust that opened up between Rolls Royce and Airbus was so large, over twenty years would elapse before a Rolls Royce engine was available on the Airbus aircraft- that was 1989 when Cathay Pacific Airlines specified the new Trent 700 engine for its A330s. Quite literally, the day after the French, British and German governments signed the agreement to create Airbus on 26 July 1968, the governments were getting a case of cold feet. For the French, that was the year the franc collapsed on the world currency markets and the French government began to have reservations about having three airline projects going on at once- Concorde, the Airbus A300, and the Dassault Mercure. It was clear that it was politically unfeasible to pull out of the Concorde program. Many French officials their faith in the 100% French program of the Dassault Mercure despite the protests of Airbus engineers that the Mercure would be a flop. That left Airbus on the cutting block. The redesign of the Airbus to a smaller aircraft to make off-the-shelf engines possible instead of the RB.207 saved the program as it cut the cost of the program and made it more appealing to potential customers- this was enough to give French officials cause to reconsider and not withdraw from Airbus. 

The British, however, were less than open-minded. In short, money had been put up to help with the launch of the BAC Three-Eleven which used two RB.211 engines. The smaller, redesigned A300 designated the A300B could now also use RB.211 engines, but that also put the new A300B square in competition with the BAC Three-Eleven. Lockheed and BAC were even in discussions on collaborating on the Three-Eleven and with the French economic malaise spreading through Europe, some in the British government wanted to put their bets on collaboration with the United States. Believe it or not, there was discussion by British officials about pulling out of Concorde, but again, like the French realized, that was politically unfeasible. That's not often realized that the British and French were considering pulling the plug on Concorde before it even made its first flight! 9 April 1969 was the first flight of the first British-built Concorde; on the day after, British officials met with their French counterparts to inform them the British were pulling out of Airbus. 

Karl Schiller, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs

British withdrawal from Airbus didn't come as a bolt out of the blue- the indications were there for over a year and the RB.207 fiasco made it clear that it was coming sooner rather than later. Earlier that year in 1969, the Germans made it known to the French that they would be willing to fill the gap in the Airbus consortium should the British pull out. At the time, the lion's share of the A300 was split between Great Britain and France with West Germany getting the remaining stake. Even though World War II had ended 25 years earlier, the German aircraft industry was still a hollow shell of its former self despite the consortium of seven German aircraft manufacturers that teamed together to form the West German contribution to Airbus. That the Germans were willing to step in to fill that possible gap is due to the efforts of two politicians. The first one was Karl Schiller, the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs. Schiller was a quiet, bespectacled economist that had made his name in West German politics focusing on rebuilding the economy. The other politician was more well-known, Franz Josef Strauss. Strauss was a boisterous Bavarian who never seemed to be far from scandal in German politics. In 1956, Strauss become the youngest defense minister in German history and was tasked with rebuilding the German military. The procurement of the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter for the Luftwaffe was contentious and a Lockheed lobbyist testified that he had paid $10 million in bribes to Strauss to select the Starfighter. During this time, Lockheed had gotten itself entangled with bribery allegations with several different aircraft procurement programs to gain sales of the Starfighter. Strauss filed a slander suit against the lobbyist, but since the allegations couldn't be corroborated, the issue was dropped. The German magazine Der Spiegel then accused Strauss of taking bribes in the construction of German military facilities. The resulting controversy resulted in Strauss stepping down for having the editor and owner of Der Spiegel arrested and held in retribution. Strauss's political career was all but over had it not been for the 1966 elections that resulted in a coalition government and Strauss being tapped to be Minister of the Treasury to work with Karl Schiller in growing the German economy. 

Both Strauss and Schiller were an interesting pair that had common goals of growing the German economy. Schiller was quiet, Strauss was loud. Schiller was dry and Strauss was animated. Both liked the idea of Airbus as a project to tie Europe together. Strauss in particular had a strong dislike of nationalism as he felt it was counterproductive to economic prosperity- having a central role in Airbus would not only benefit West Germany, it would also economically tie the nation to the rest of Europe for the greater good and keep nationalism from raising its ugly head again. Strauss was a long time supporter of the German aviation industry and he was a private pilot himself. When the Luftwaffe selected the F-104 Starfighter, he was instrumental in getting license production for German industry with Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) building 260 F-104Gs for the Luftwaffe. Given Strauss's aviation connections, he was well aware of the British getting cold feet in 1969. Before the British pull out, Schiller and Strauss had sent ministers to France to let them know that if Britain were unwilling to support Airbus, the West German government was prepared to double its investment to as much as 50% of the program provided the French did the same. Given the economic climate of Europe at the time, that was an astoundingly generous offer on the table in the event of a British withdrawal from the consortium. 

An A300 wing set being loaded for delivery to Toulouse from Hawker's facilities.

Increasing German participation in Airbus in the event of a British pullout was part of what the coalition government from the West German 1966 elections wanted from Franz Josef Strauss and Karl Schiller- how to grow the nation's economy and despite the economic downturn of the time, the British pullout from Airbus presented an opportunity for the German economy. Once the British were out, negotiations began in earnest between West Germany and France on a new 50-50 workshare in Airbus. One of the few sticking points in the deal was that there was quite a bit of difference between the state of affairs of the West German aerospace industry and that of the French industry. Clearly the French were more built out and advanced in terms of their industrial capacity for large commercial aircraft production. This particular issue found its resolution via the solving the problem of the A300's wing which was the responsibility of Hawker Siddeley. The company was aghast with the British withdrawal from Airbus, but early on was very clear that it wanted to stay in Airbus even if the British government didn't contribute. Hawker was willing to fund 40% of the wing design and manufacture out of its own internal funds, but it needed the balance of the 60% to continue with Airbus. That majority portion of the funding for the A300's wing was to have come from the British government prior to their withdrawal. If Hawker was out, a new contractor for the wing would have to be secured and that was something the French didn't want as it was hard enough to convince the French government to continue supporting Airbus. Having to get a new wing would almost guarantee the death knell for Airbus and this was similarly the case for West Germany as well. They were on the cusp of getting a 50% stake in Airbus and there was no way for West Germany to go it alone if Hawker had to pull out and the French pulled the plug on their support. 

And that's at the moment Strauss intervened personally. He pressed the coalition government led by Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger to come up with the extra money to keep Hawker Siddeley in the consortium. Strauss sent word to Airbus that he was willing to double West Germany's financial contribution to Airbus from 500 million Deutschmarks to 1 billion Deutschmarks so Hawker's wing could be fully funded. Needless to say, Roger Béteille and his team at Airbus were quick to take up Strauss on his offer. The influx of German funds allowed Hawker to complete the work on the A300 wing with a fixed price contract for four wing sets- two for testing and two for the two prototype aircraft as well as the tooling and machinery to produce four wing sets per month for Airbus. 

Interestingly at the time of Strauss's intervention to save the Hawker wing, two of Germany's elder aircraft designers, Willy Messerschmitt and Ludwig Bölkow, insisted they had a better wing design than the Hawker wing. Both men were over 70 and claimed their wing was lighter and simpler than Hawker's design and pressed the government to abandon the British design. As one German official had put it, "We tried to prevent situations that could have been damaging for the two men, because basically one should not make famous people look ridiculous." Naturally the question became that if Messerschmitt's wing was lighter and simpler, could it still be strong and stand up to the strain of repeated takeoffs and landings in commercial service? The story goes that Messerschmitt took his design to Britain to lobby for it and was told something to the effect "Dr. Messerschmitt, I believe the fatigue life of a Bf 109 was about fifty hours provided it didn't meet a Spitfire!"

Strauss's work was crucial when Airbus was at its most vulnerable following the British withdrawal from the consortium. Strauss become the first head of Airbus's supervisory board in 1970. Increasing German participation in Airbus was also crucial to the rebuilding and expansion of the nation's aerospace industry. In honor of his contributions to supporting German aviation, the Munich Airport is named for Franz Josef Strauss. 

Source: Close to the Sun: How Airbus Challenged America's Domination of the Skies by Stephen Aris. Aurum Press, 2002, pp 35-46. Images: T-Mobile, Abendzeitung-Muenchen, Trucknetuk.com forum.

The Marine Corps Bet on the Harrier

Hawker P.1172 Kestrel in KES markings

For a large part of the postwar history of American military aviation, the procurement of non-American aircraft was an unusual exception. I had written back in 2011 about the efforts that led to the selection of the Dassault Falcon 20 jet as the basis of the US Coast Guard's HU-25 Guardian medium range search-and-rescue aircraft.  The two most significant prior examples of non-American aircraft procurement were the Martin B-57 Canberra selected by the USAF as its new interdiction bomber in 1951 and the selection of the Hawker AV-8A Harrier which entered service with the Marine Corps in 1971. The story of the Marine Corps' evaluation and procurement of the Harrier is one that readily demonstrates the Marines' political savvy in navigating the treacherous waters of Congressional funding as well as a single-minded commitment to efficient close air support to the Marines on the ground. The predecessor of the Harrier was the Hawker-funded P.1127 Kestrel demonstrator. Two prototypes and four development aircraft were built and then followed by nine more developed P.1127 airframes which in 1963 were to be part of what was called the Kestrel Evaluation Squadron (KES). The aircraft were designated Kestrel FGA Mk1 and the KES was staffed with test pilots from the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, the US Navy, US Army, US Air Force, and the German Luftwaffe. Because there were three nations in the Kestrel Evaluation Squadron, it was also referred to as the Tripartite Evaluation Squadron (TES). The unit was formed in 1965 for the purpose of exploring the possibilities of a V/STOL combat aircraft. 

At the time of the KES flight program, Lt. Col. Thomas Miller was assigned to the US Marine Corps' Air Weapons Systems Requirements Branch at the headquarters. It was the job of the staff of this department to review all the latest research and development to see what sort of equipment would be useful to the Marines. Miller and a fellow officer, Lt. Col. John Metzko, had gotten hold of film footage from the British Embassy in Washington DC of the Kestrels in action. By this point, the RAF had committed to getting the Kestrel operational with a more developed aircraft called the Harrier. They had monitored the P.1127 Kestrel program despite not having any Marine pilots in the evaluation squadron and when it became clear the RAF was going to go forward with the Harrier, they immediately briefed the USMC Deputy Chief of Aviation who was none other than General Keith McCutcheon. I had written about him recently as the "Father of Modern Close Air Support" and needless to say, given General McCutcheon's background as a passionate advocate for the Marines' own close air support, he was readily on board to find out more about the Harrier. The next step was the brief the Commandant of the Corps, General Leonard F. Chapman. With the enthusiastic support of the Commandant, the Marines then set about on getting flight time on the new Harrier. The British were adamant that anyone who would be evaluating the Harrier be a qualified test pilot and working through the defense liasons at the British Embassy and Hawker Siddeley, Miller and Marine test pilot Lt. Col. Bud Baker were chosen to head to the UK. Miller's test flying experience was getting the A-4 Skyhawk and F-4 Phantom into Marine service, so he was well versed in what an aircraft had to be able to do to support the Marines on the ground. At the request of the British, the two Marines would clandestinely make 10 flights each in the Harrier and would wear civilian clothing during their stay in Britain during their evaluation. Test pilot John Farley of the Royal Aircraft Establishment worked with Miller and Baker to prepare them for their Harrier flights. It was Farley who made the first flight of the P.1127 Kestrel prototypes in 1964 and he would come to amass 19 years of experience as a Harrier test pilot. 

Gen. McCutcheon, USMC Deputy Chief of Aviation

Miller and Baker realized very quickly during their flights that the Harrier was a new breed of combat aircraft that Marines had to have. To them, it could do everything the A-4 Skyhawk could do but not need a 6,000 foot runway to do it. All it needed was a 1,000 foot strip for rolling STOL takeoffs with an increased weapon load or the deck of an amphibious assault carrier. It was clearly close air support that could not only go where the Marines were, but be readily based close to where the Marines were in action. To get their hands on the Harrier, the Marines needed funding. Not only did the Marines have to deal with the US Navy since the Marine Corps is a department of the Navy, but they weren't sure how the US aircraft industry would react to the Corps wanting a British aircraft. After briefing Commandant Chapman, they met with the Presidential Scientific Advisory Board to get their support.

Fortunately the Navy was receptive and sent over their own team to fly the Harrier as well which allowed them to compare with their earlier Kestrel flights as part of the KES. Also fortuitous for the Marines was that a Marine was in charge of the Navy's A-4 Skyhawk program, Col. Edwin Harper, and he got to fly the Harrier as well, giving him the unique perspective of comparing the Skyhawk with the Harrier. With the ready support of the Navy in 1969, the Marines now had to lobby Congress for the funding. The FY1970 budget didn't have any money for Harrier procurement, but Harper, Miller, Baker and General McCutcheon briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee anyway. McCutcheon made his pitch to the chairman, Senator Barry Goldwater, that he didn't want just a handful of Harriers and do an evaluation. That'd been done already. "We want to buy a whole slug of them and get started and have a meaningful program!" 

Rep. Mendel Rivers (D-South Carolina) crucial to the Harrier program

Though the FY1970 Department of Defense budget was set at their time of their briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee, the support of the Presidential Scientific Advisory Board insured that supplemental funding was secured as an amendment to the FY1970 budget bill. The supplemental funding was enough to procure 12 Harrier jets at a cost of $57.6 million. But there was a catch- the money was secured via the Marines canceling procurement of 17 McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs. It would be necessary to win over McDonnell Douglas. As part of getting Congressional support, the House Armed Services Committee was also briefed on the Harrier plans and the chairman of the House committee, Representative Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, would support the procurement of the 12 Harriers as long as future Harrier buys were aircraft built in the United States. Realizing that the Marines was a significant ground breaking sale into the US defense market, Hawker Siddeley immediately sent representatives to the United States to canvas the aircraft industry and find an American partner for the AV-8A Harrier program. Hawker's team met with eight aircraft manufacturers and narrowed the list down to three- Ling-Temco-Vought, Grumman, and McDonnell Douglas. Hawker felt McDonnell Douglas was the best fit given their naval aircraft experience and at the time, the A-4 Skyhawk program was starting to wind down and the AV-8A Harrier would be good transition for McDD. On 29 September, Hawker Siddeley and McDonnell Douglas signed a 15-year agreement to cooperate on the AV-8A Harrier program. In tandem with this agreement came one from Rolls Royce to team up with Pratt and Whitney on the Pegasus engine. The teams developed a plan to transition production of the Marine's AV-8A Harrier flight as well as the Pegasus engine from UK production to US production over a span of five years. With a planned buy of 114 AV-8A Harriers, it was found by Representative Mendel Rivers' staff that it was cheaper to stick with UK manufacture instead of phasing in production in the United States. During the FY1971 budget debate, discussions centered on the pros and cons of moving production to the United States and eventually Congress agreed with Mendel Rivers' analysis that there was no need to phase in production of the AV-8A in the United States. Though the agreement never resulted in US production, it did lay down the foundations for the later AV-8B Harrier II program. 

AV-8A Harriers of VMA-513, the first USMC Harrier unit

With Mendel Rivers' support now behind them, McDonnell Douglas agreed to become the engineering group responsible for product support of the AV-8A Harrier which was more than adequate compensation for the 17 canceled Phantoms. The AV-8A Harrier first entered service in 1971 at the Navy's Flight Test Center at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland while the first Harrier squadrons prepared for the transition to the AV-8A. The first operational Marine Corps squadron was VMA-513 "Flying Nightmares" which had been flying the F-4 Phantom since 1963. VMA-513 become operational with the AV-8A Harrier in May 1971 at MCAS Beaufort in Representative Mendel Rivers' home state of South Carolina. 

Source: Harrier II: Validating V/STOL by Lon O. Nordeen. Naval Institute Press, 2006, pp 23-30. Photos: Wikipedia, USMC.

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.

How Rolls-Royce Scuttled British Participation in Airbus

In the late 1960s as the nascent Airbus Industrie was formalizing the design of the A300, the original intent of the consortium was to use a new 47,500 lb-thrust turbofan in development by Rolls-Royce, the RB.207. Great Britain at the time was actively involved in the early days of Airbus as a full partner, riding on the heels of the Anglo-French Concorde program. The two main British companies involved with Airbus at the time were Rolls-Royce to provide the engines for the A300 and Hawker Siddeley to provide the wing design for the airliner. However, all was not well for the commercial airframe start up as development costs in Toulouse were rising and worse yet, RB.207 development was falling behind at Rolls-Royce. I had posted earlier on the A300 that the original design for the aircraft, the HBN100, was a much larger aircraft than what resulted, seating over 300 passengers compared to the 250 of A300 as built. As result of the HBN100 being a twin jet the size of the rival Lockheed L-1011 and McDonnell Douglas DC-10, it would need more powerful engines than the Rolls-Royce RB.211 used on the Tristar and the General Electric CF6 used on the DC-10 and this responsibility was assigned to Rolls-Royce to develop the RB.207. 

With the development of the RB.207 behind schedule, timing could not have been worse in 1968 when European financial houses made a run on the French gold reserves that depleted the reserves by 30% in a short period of time and caused not just the collapse of the French franc, but the collapse of President Charles De Gaulle's government amidst political unrest in the country. As economic malaise spread through Europe, airlines began to have doubts about the viability of the A300 and its original 300+ seating capacity. Airbus partners Sud-Aviation and Hawker Siddeley even began to prepare fall back designs based around a smaller aircraft. 

Matters worsened through the year for Airbus as the Rolls-Royce was also developing the RB.211 engine for the Tristar as well as the RB.207. Given that three engines were going into the Tristar versus only two engines for the original A300 design, Rolls-Royce began to divert engineering resources from the RB.207 program to the RB.211 program which was facing technical issues of its own as the world's first three-spool engine design. The RB.207 wasn't even Airbus' first choice for the A300. French engine manufacturer SNECMA had partnered with Pratt & Whitney to offer the JT9D engine which was initially favored by Airbus, but Rolls-Royce exercised its considerable political clout and had the UK government push for a "European" engine in the form of the proposed RB.207. Rolls-Royce even went as far as to suggest that it was wrong for an American engine be part of a European aircraft. Due to pressure from Rolls-Royce and the UK government, the RB.207 engine was selected for the original A300 design but in just a few years it was Rolls-Royce itself that was putting more emphasis on the RB.211 for the Tristar than the RB.207 it had pushed for just a few years earlier!

The writing on the wall came when Roger Beteille, the head of Airbus, found out the selling price of the RB.211 engine. He had found out that two RB.207 engines would cost more than three RB.211 engines which put the A300 at a considerable price disadvantage to the Tristar. There was no way the A300 would succeed if Airbus stuck it out with Rolls-Royce and the RB.207 engine. The only way Airbus could find a way out was to change the size of the A300 from a 300+ seat aircraft to a 250 seat maximum aircraft. It was a master stroke that saved the program as it now made existing engines in the form of the RB.211 and the CF6 now appropriate for the A300 and Pratt & Whitney/SNECMA could now offer the JT9D as well. 

In December 1968, the A300 was formally launched as a 250 seater with a wider range of engine options that left out the RB.207 engine. As a smaller aircraft, the airlines of Europe were more interested in the design and ironically, it was the head of Hawker Siddeley, Sir Harry Broadhurst, who announced that the RB.207 engine wasn't needed and that the JT9D was on the table as an option for the new A300 design. At this point things got very complicated for the UK government. Money had been provided for the development of the RB.207 engine for the original A300 design. Money had also been invested in the BAC Three-Eleven, which was now square in competition with new, smaller A300 design. The Three-Eleven would have been powered by two RB.211 engines, the engines that Rolls-Royce had given development priority over the RB.207. In the end, a need for address Great Britain's trade deficit meant that official support was given to the Three-Eleven program. This also increased the market for the RB.211 engine as continual problems at Rolls-Royce eventually resulted in the company going into receivership with the British government to keep it afloat. By the summer of 1970 Great Britain withdrew from the Airbus consortium as continued support for Rolls-Royce put it in conflict with the A300, but Sir Harry Broadhurst felt Hawker's investment was worth keeping and Hawker Siddeley remained with the Airbus consortium as a major subcontractor building the wings for the A300. 

Source: Flight of the Titans: Boeing, Airbus, and the Battle for the Future of Air Travel by Kenny Kemp. Virgin Books, 2006, p71-84.

Development of the Harrier Ski-Jump

The development of the BAe Sea Harrier FRS.1 and the ski-jump are closely intertwined and the discussion one almost always leads to the discussion of the other. Hawker-Siddeley Aircraft, one of BAe's predecessor companies, had studied a naval Harrier variant as far back as 1969 as the P.1184 Maritime Harrier. When the Royal Navy awarded HSA a contract for naval Harrier variant in 1972, financial austerity was the watch word of the day in the British government and though based in part on the P.1184 Maritime Harrier, what would become the Sea Harrier FRS.1 would be a far less radical departure and minimum-change version of the land-based RAF Harrier GR.1.

In 1973 Royal Navy Lt. Commander David Taylor first formulated the ski-jump concept for V/STOL aircraft in the same class as the Harrier. His work was further developed in cooperation with the Hawker's Kingston division and the Ministry of Defence in sophisticated computer models followed by actual flight testing with an adjustable ski-jump built by HSA at the Royal Aircraft Establishment's main testing facility at Bedford.

One of the ski-jump's biggest proponents was John Farley, HSA's chief test pilot for the Harrier and Sea Harrier programs. During his test flights with early Harrier GR.1s off the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes, he found that there were certain moments in the pitching and heaving of a carrier deck in rough seas that could play havoc with a fully-loaded Sea Harrier making an STOL run off the carrier deck. In fact, tests had shown that in some sea conditions, as little as 5 degrees of deck angle up or down either at the stern or bow could shut down flight operations completely.

Farley also noted that in a pitching carrier deck, the most stable point to land in VTOL mode was the center of the deck as the ship virtually pivoted about that point in rough seas. Ideally, a fully-loaded Sea Harrier without a ski-jump would need the full-length of the deck to take off, but this meant that launching and recovery flight operations couldn't be simultaneously undertaken. Testing with the ground-based ski-jump at RAE Bedford showed that a shorter takeoff run would be needed, allowing the forward half of the deck to be used for launching aircraft off the ski-jump and from the midpoint back used for recovery of Sea Harriers.

Farley himself made the first takeoff from the ski-jump at RAE Bedford on 5 August 1977 with the sixth production Harrier GR.1. The first series of tests had the ramp set at 6 degrees, then moved it up to 12 degrees and then finally to 20 degrees. With the ramp at its steepest 20 degree setting, Farley could get a Harrier airborne with as little as 42 knots of airspeed as the ramp provided a significant upward velocity vector that allowed the pilot time to pivot the nozzles back, clean up the aircraft and depart in nearly all but the worst sea conditions. In addition, should an emergency occur on takeoff from a ski-jump, there was valuable time to either jettison the stores or eject.

Testing further showed that the ski-jump reduced required wind-over-deck speed. As the upcoming Invincible class "Harrier carriers" were gas turbine powered, not needing higher speeds to achieve ideal wind-over-deck speeds meant a more inexpensive and less powerful powerplant would be needed for the ship, an added bonus in the atmosphere of financial austerity of the day.

It was also found that as the aircraft reached the ski-jump, there was a rapid increase in loading on the undercarriage and as a result, the design of the Sea Harrier was modified to incorporate structural reinforcement around the aft main undercarriage just below the blast deflectors of the aft nozzles.

The trials at RAE Bedford were tremendously successful and a 7 degree ski-jump was added to the already-completed HMS Invincible and to the HMS Illustrious. The lower-than-ideal angle was due to the presence of the forward Sea Dart SAM launcher on the bow. The last ship of the class, HMS Ark Royal, wasn't finished until 1985 an as such, it got a 40-foot deck extension and a 12 degree ski-jump, allowing it to launch a fully-loaded Sea Harrier. In 1986 the Invincible and Illustrious had their ski-jumps refitted to the same standard as the Ark Royal. In addition, when the HMS Hermes underwent its refit in 1979 from an assault carrier to one compatible with the Sea Harrier, it got a 12 degree ski-jump as well. The ski-jumps were crucial to Harrier GR.3 and Sea Harrier FRS.1 operations in the Falklands campaign in 1982.

The sea trials for the Sea Harrier FRS.1 began in October 1979 aboard the HMS Hermes and the first operational sea deployment took place in May 1980 aboard the HMS Invincible.

Source: BAe Sea Harrier (Warpaint Series No. 75) by Kev Darling. Warpaint Books Ltd, 2010, p1-8.