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

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.