Word: boac
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...loser in this unbusinesslike scheme is Britain's aircraft industry. It is foundering between inefficiency and inordinately high profits. The expense of developing the TSR 2 bomber, for example, became so outlandish that the government instead decided to buy 50 American F-llls. Commercial lines have suffered too; BOAC, after innumerable problems with British-made equipment, put $154 million down on six Boeing 747s...
Since he took over as head of Brit ain's ailing BOAC in early 1964, Sir Giles Guthrie, 51, has worked a minor miracle. Unfazed by the state-owned airline's $224 million accumulated def icit, brought about mostly by costly equipment flops in the 1950s, ex-Banker Guthrie lopped off money-losing routes, eliminated nonessential jobs, enlivened the company's advertising. His no-nonsense reforms soon had BOAC in the black for the first time in eight years; next month the company will announce record annual earnings of $64 million. The most remarkable thing about...
Last week one M.P. after another took the House of Commons floor to denounce the way BOAC is being run. What particularly rankled the critics was the airline's reliance on U.S. made Boeing planes instead of British aircraft. Indeed, one of Sir Giles's first decisions on taking command was to scrap an existing BOAC order for 30 Vickers Super VC10 passenger jets for the simple reason that Boeing 707s are more economical. Since Vickers was having trouble selling its plane to any non-British airline, the move provoked an angry outcry; in 1964 the government ordered...
...Giles not only lived with that edict but, by putting the plane on BOAC's well-promoted transatlantic service, he helped turn the craft into one of the company's biggest moneymakers. The feat only emboldened buy-British forces, who got added ammunition from the crash of a BOAC-owned 707 on Mount Fuji last March; moreover, that disaster led to the discovery of hairline tail fissures that briefly grounded a number of the company's 21 other 707s. The fact that BOAC has placed new orders for four Boeing 707 freighters and six Boeing 747s...
...reply, Sir Giles is strictly business. "I am," he says, "completely satisfied with the Boeing aircraft's performance and happy with their economics and reliability." BOAC's success under Sir Giles is dramatized all the more by the troubles that are bedeviling its sister airline, BEA. Saddled with an aging fleet and unprofitable domestic routes, BEA received an added setback last year when the government turned down its request to buy $224 million worth of Boeing 727s and 737s. Instead, it has ordered 18 made-in-Britain BAG OneElevens. For the year ending March 31, BEA is expected...