Word: airbuses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...drama had begun almost a full week earlier, aboard Air France Flight 139, en route from Tel Aviv to Paris. Minutes after the Airbus took off from its stopover at Athens International Airport, a German girl in her late twenties got out of her seat in the first-class section of the jetliner. "Sit down!" she shouted. Holding two hand grenades aloft, the girl then herded the startled passengers into the tourist section of the plane, where three male comrades-a German and two Arabs-were already in control. With that, 242 passengers and twelve crew members began a terrifying...
Ironically, the slump in the U.S. jetliner business seems to have spurred old competitors to new heights. By far the most noteworthy planes of 1975-the Concorde supersonic transport, the mediumrange, twin-engined Airbus A300B and the short-range Fokker VFW-614-were built by European consortiums. None of these craft pose an immediate threat to U.S. pre-eminence in the world market. But the European planes are of such quality that U.S. manufacturers now must watch not only one another but foreigners determined to open new horizons of excitement and speed in air travel...
Despite these setbacks, however, Europe's planemakers are at last seeing a patch or two of blue sky. Last week the wide-bodied A300B airbus, made by a Paris-based multinational consortium called Airbus Industrie, went into commercial service on Air France between Paris and London. This week the ambitious MRCA (multirole combat aircraft), a joint project of Britain, West Germany and Italy, is scheduled to make its maiden flight in the skies above Munich. Both promise to offer stiff competition for American planemakers...
...A300B, Europe's aircraft builders are offering greater passenger capacity in the high-density, short-to medium-range travel market now dominated by Boeing's 727 and McDonnell Douglas' DC-9-both smaller aircraft. If last week's flight was any harbinger, the European airbus will do well. All 251 seats (compared with a maximum of 163 on a U.S. 727) on the twin-engine plane were filled, and Air France reported that its first 30 flights to London were sold out. The line has also announced that it plans additional round-trip runs to Nice...
...aviation showcase of the world. (Instead, U.S. aircraft companies simply revised existing designs.) Yet even with the A300B, the MRCA and many other entries by the British, the West Germans and even the Soviets, there is a feeling that the European industry is in need of organizational streamlining. Airbus Industrie, for example, is a consortium of companies in Britain, West Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and France. Each company builds components that are shipped to the Aérospatiale center in Toulouse, where they are finally assembled. The MRCA is built by Panavia of Munich, jointly owned by the British, West...