BAE Systems

52 The Aircraft of British Aerospace and BAE SYSTEMS 1977 - 2017

Inception

When British Aerospace was formed in

1977, BAe was not a member of the

Airbus consortium but a major sub-

contractor designing and building the

wings of the Airbus A300. This sub-

contract was inherited from Hawker

Siddeley Aviation (HSA) whose share of

manufacturing amounted to

approximately 18% of the A300. From

1966 until 1969 Hawker Siddeley had

been a major partner in the tripartite

Government-sponsored Airbus project,

along with Sud Aviation (later

Aerospatiale and now EADS) and

Deutsche Airbus (now EADS) until the

British Government withdrew from the

project.

Go-ahead

Airbus was instigated as an attempt by

the European aircraft industry to wrest

domination of the civil airliner market

away from the USA. On 26 September

1967, a Memorandum of Understanding

on the European Airbus was duly signed

in Bonn by the British, French and German

Governments. Sud Aviation had overall

design leadership for the 300-seater

Airbus A300 and in return, Rolls-Royce led

on the engine for the aircraft, the RB207.

Britain and France were the major

partners providing 37.5% of the costs and

sharing work in those proportions, while

Germany provided the remaining 25% of

the finance and the work. Sud Aviation

was to build the flight deck and the

fuselage centre section. Hawker Siddeley

would build the wing from tip to tip,

including the high-lift devices and the

engine pylons. The German industry

group would build the remainder.

Technical direction and final assembly

was centred at Toulouse.

Costs escalated and initial estimates

were quickly exceeded so all three

Governments obliged the Airbus

consortium to come up with a cheaper

version of their design. At the end of 1968

a new smaller, cheaper 250-seater version

of the Airbus was proposed,

unimaginatively dubbed the A300B.

However, Tony Benn, the British Minister

of Technology had become very

unenthusiastic towards the project and

told his French and German colleagues

that the A300B was a new project and

that the Memorandum of Understanding

on the A300 was dead.

British Government

withdrawal

French and German Governmental

irritation at the reluctance of the British

Government to back the A300B reached a

climax in London on 10 April 1969. After a

meeting of the three Ministers concerned,

the French and Germans announced a

‡Qantas A300 B4

VH-TAA delivered in

June 1981. It was

later converted to

become a freighter.

(Airbus)

British Aerospace

and Airbus

ˆYR-LCB was an

A310 of TAROM

delivered in

December 1992.

(Airbus)