Word: avanti
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With their swept-back wings, forward-mounted canards, or stabilizers, and pusher propellers, they look a little as if they should be moving through the air tailfirst. But the two new designs -- Beech Aircraft's Starship and Rinaldo Piaggio's P. 180 Avanti -- are very much forward-looking pieces of machinery. Using advanced technology to deliver high performance and good fuel efficiency, they could dictate the shape of small transport aircraft in the coming years...
...week the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration announced that Beech, based in Wichita, had met Government standards for airworthiness with its Starship, and granted "type certification," clearing the way for deliveries to customers by next spring. Piaggio, which has headquarters in Genoa, Italy, hopes to receive U.S. certification for its Avanti model by the end of the year. Both planes, each seating seven to ten passengers, are expected to be warmly welcomed in the corporate market. Says Henry Ogrodzinski, communications director of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association: "It looks like ((both firms)) have come up with a winner...
Piaggio's Avanti, while sharing such features as rear-facing engines and nose-mounted wings, has a somewhat less radical design. It is equipped with a standard tail and is built mostly of aluminum. But Piaggio claims it will fly faster and more efficiently than its U.S. competitor. Prices will be roughly comparable...
...much of that demand will benefit the Starship and the Avanti is uncertain. The manufacturers still have to demonstrate that their performance claims are valid. Moreover, some executives may not like the idea of entrusting their lives to such novel and unusual designs. Ogrodzinski, for one, thinks they will. "Looks and status have always been a selling point in corporate aircraft," he says. "There is a certain prestige in owning the latest design...
...histrionic talent that, say, Maria Callas brought to her art. Instead, she unleashed a voice elemental in its passionate intensity. When Price sang the Forza Leonora's Pace, pace, mio Dio, it was the heartrending plea of a desperate woman begging God for surcease; when she cried O Scarpia, avanti a Dio! at the end of Tosca, it was a chilling curse delivered at the gates of hell. And when she sang Aida's anguished O patria mia, as she did last week, it was a radiant invocation of pathos...