442 EUROPEAN SHORT-HAUL MARKET

consumption engines, highlighting the advantages that can result from advances in all technologies. Europe's produc­tive efficiency is well below that of American companies and significant gains in efficiency and reductions in first costs are consequently easier to obtain. Moreover, concern is growing in Europe at the enormous balance-of-payments deficit caused by dependence on US airline equipment.

In the early 1950s most European airlines used Viscounts, Convair 240/340/440s, and DC-3s on short-haul services. Ten years later most Europe short-haul airlines used Caravelles and Europe was producing some 60 per cent of the short-haul aircraft used by its airlines. Disappointingly, the One-Eleven made little impact on scheduled European operations outside BUA/British Caledonian and British Airways; the latter, similarly, was the only Trident operator in Europe. The DC-9 and 737 became the staple twins. By 1974 Europe's share had fallen below 50 per cent and continues on a downward path. With a little official pressure, the national airlines of France, Germany and the United Kingdom have compiled and issued in initial form joint outline requirements for the 1980s.

Subsequently six of the major European airframe manu­facturers agreed jointly to respond to these outline requirements, to explore the possibility of designing and producing a family of aircraft to meet the needs of Europe and the rest of the world and to strive to end competition among European companies in selling existing products.

Although in theory the "Eurac" companies appear still to embody the "fragmentation" problem in that they are spread out all over Europe, they are all contained within a diameter of about 800 miles. If the organisation involved all European manufacturers, the circle would have a diameter of less than 1,200 miles—the same as that of the Airbus organisation, or half the distance from Pratt & Whitney in Connecticut to Boeing in Seattle. It is not the distance that matters so much as the industrial organisa­tion selected, and the will to work together.

The best summary may be the following brief but relevant comments.

"The nationally supported scheduled airlines of Europe are doing a miserable job of serving the traffic needs of European travellers. Supported by capacity restrictions, high fares and revenue pooling, the European national

Mercure, above, and Boeing 737, below, were both launched for European airlines—Air Inter and Lufthansa respectively. Ten Mercures have been sold as against 463 737s

FLIGHT International, 25 September 1975

airlines have let their air-travel market pass them by." (Aviation Week, June 4, 1973.) "While the EEC transport aircraft fleet is currently expanding faster than the world­wide average (it constituted 17-9 per cent of the world civil fleet in 1974, compared with 14-9 per cent in 1970), its share of aircraft actually built in the Common Market

area is falling fast: from 33 per cent in 1970 right down to 20-2 per cent last year." (Professor A. Spinelli, EEC Commission, Brussels, October 28, 1974.) "At a modest airline growth rate of 8-6 per cent, Europe's negative balance of trade in airliners alone would reach $936 million (about £400 million) by 1980 and a further $6,711 million (about £2,900 million) in 1984 at 1974 prices." (Allen Greenwood, President of Aecma, January 14, 1975.)

It seems incredible that the state of affairs outlined by Spinelli and Greenwood can exist in a group of economically linked countries more populous than the United States, where almost all the major airlines are nationally owned instruments, and where the major pro­portion of the aerospace companies are either owned or heavily funded by their governments.

Finally, adverse comparisons of the past achievements of the United Kingdom and of Europe with those of the United States appear to be a currently popular disease. Table 6 may be an antidote.

TABLE 6: EUROPE FIRST

Transatlantic non-stop Scheduled jet service Scheduled turboprop

service Scheduled short-haul

jet service Scheduled short-haul wide-

body service Scheduled supersonic

service

Vickers Vimy

de Havilland Comet

Vickers Viscount

Sud-Est Caravelle

Airbus A300

Concorde

June 14,1919 May 2,1952

April 19,1953

May 12,1959

May 23,1974

Early 1976