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Post by Dave Homewood on Oct 18, 2016 18:41:11 GMT 12
In the 1960's and 1970's it seems that the British Government deliberately intervened in the British aviation industry, forcing the merger of some of the biggest and most successful aviation companies in the world - de Havilland, Hawker Siddeley, Vickers Armstrong, Rolls-Royce, Avro, English Electric, Bristol, etc, etc till there were just two conglomerates, Hawker Siddeley Group and BAC, and one major independent - Handley Page - which could no longer compete and went bust. Then the Govt stepped in again and smooshed the two groups together forming British Aerospace (BAe).
After all these years, what are your thoughts? Was pooling all the innovation and funding into one big company as happened a great idea? Or was the removal of competition and independence in the industry a complete disaster?
What does BAe manufacture now? The Hawk. Anything else as far as I can think they then have to partner with Germany, Italy, Spain and France to get any new designs built.
If there were still ten or so big companies out there would we be seeing ten times the new innovations coming online? Is the streamlined BAe cherrypicking ideas and only running with a small few at a time?
What are your thoughts?
And of course in the USA now it seems most aircraft production is either Boeing or Lockheed owned so they have taken the same route, buying up and merging with other competitors. Is it good?
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Post by mumbles on Oct 18, 2016 20:02:27 GMT 12
Merging the companies was probably the one useful thing postwar UK governments did, after years of counterproductive and destructive meddling and policy decisions, as it kept the talent pool and corporate knowledge in being and saved those companies from themselves.
Aside from economies of scale, from what I've read the corporate cultures between British and their bigger and better funded US rivals were worlds apart, with the British verging on archaically inefficient. They didn't have the resources or the markets of the americans, no matter how good the ideas, but were also hamstrung by deeply conservative culture, an inability to grasp the realities of the postwar world and ignorant government meddling, of which there are many examples. One could argue that the successful postwar aircraft made it in spite of the British industry, rather than a demonstrative product of it. There is a story of Boeing execs visiting the Comet production line and immediately realising that this aircraft was never going to be a commercial threat to them - de Havilland would never be able to build them quickly enough, or be adaptable enough to change, simply weren't efficient enough, among other reasons.
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Post by madmac on Oct 18, 2016 20:47:07 GMT 12
My understanding is that Handley Page went bust in part because they won't merge, so they got cutout of the all the government contracts.
Also missing from that list is Westland, who when sold in the 80's by maggie was sold to the Americans as a thanks for their support in the falklands (a UK company did have a better offer in apparently).
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Post by Dave Homewood on Oct 18, 2016 20:49:14 GMT 12
Hmm, yes, that does make sense. Also before the war there seemed to be dozens of companies company designing and making prototypes for a proposed contract, but only one would be granted the contract so that must have been a lot of money wasted on useless designs and time and resources, not to mention the government and MOD processes to decide which was best (or in most cases, the least worst). All working together with one budget for one prototype to get the best result must work better, I guess.
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Post by shorty on Oct 18, 2016 20:58:08 GMT 12
As the years go on aircraft have become more and more expensive and have reached the stage that large production runs are required to recoup the costs, in turn this means that only countries with massive military forces or airlines with huge financial backing can afford them
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Post by Peter Lewis on Oct 18, 2016 21:02:10 GMT 12
I think I have said this before, somewhere:
British airlines (and aircraft manufacturers) were fixated on the high-cost low-volume aviation market. When the market changed to low-cost high-volume they couldn't cope and were lost.
You could also argue that the post-war British governments came up with the plans to destroy the British car manufacturing industry. In order to fine-tune these plans they needed to try them out on an easier target - the British aviation industry. They have been successful in both attempts.
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Post by lesterpk on Oct 18, 2016 22:46:15 GMT 12
Disclaimer here - I work for BAe Systems. I guess you're looking mostly at aircraft but the company as a whole is much more than that, it has diversified to avoid the eggs in one basket scenario. In Australia they are very active in ship building, whole ships, not just components and run two shipyards. In Adelaide they make vertical tails for the F35 and other large titanium milled components for it as well. Lots of fingers in pies all over the world, much innovation and cutting edge stuff along with more mundane things like improved body armour. www.baesystems.com/en/home
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Post by suthg on Oct 19, 2016 6:34:23 GMT 12
BAC TSR-2 and CA AVRO Arrow both come to mind - of rising costs, limited market yet both brave and highly technical projects and long gestation, and with the Cold War changing in demands and ICBMs instead of long distance bombers etc, etc, neither were finished on time to meet the demand that earlier existed.
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Post by 30sqnatc on Oct 19, 2016 10:04:53 GMT 12
Few years ago I was dealing with the non aviation part of BAE. In an earlier post it was pointed out the BAE had diversified. They did this by buying up numerous smaller companies. I my experience this resulted in a dysfunctional company with very poor customer focus. We were invited to present at an international defence forum in South Africa on how we supported our various equipment types and how various suppliers performed. We were honest and rated BAE very poorly.
Immediately after they presentation a BAE rep for Australasia identified himself and said we should not have said what we did as their poor support was not true. Based in Australia and responsible for NZ I think he quickly realised he was on shaky ground when he had to admit that he didn't even know BAE owned the particular organization we were dealing with.
Anyway an official letter arrived from a senior manager in the UK a short while later requesting specific details of our concerns, These were duly supplied and resulted in a reply some months later admitting things like failing to process a serious safety defect for two years were actually true and were totally unsatisfactory. Too many takeovers across such broad areas resulted in cracks in their corporate engineering and support processes and multiple reporting lines.
The outcome, things did improve a little but at the same time they doubled the cost of our annual support charge. We did wonder if they were hoping we would say no to the increase and would walk away.
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Post by Ian Warren on Oct 19, 2016 11:14:56 GMT 12
My understanding is that Handley Page went bust in part because they won't merge, so they got cutout of the all the government contracts. That is exactly what I have here, Ole Sir Fredrick HP basically Oh 'Bugger' you lot, "Its my company and working well" ... the then Brit Govt would not allow the company any contracts or noosed em .. typical of the politics anywhere over there at the time.
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Post by Ian Warren on Oct 19, 2016 11:19:39 GMT 12
BAC TSR-2 and CA AVRO Arrow both come to mind - of rising costs, limited market yet both brave and highly technical projects and long gestation, and with the Cold War changing in demands and ICBMs instead of long distance bombers etc, etc, neither were finished on time to meet the demand that earlier existed. Then came the cockup with the British F-111 CRIKEY ! .. little like John key and his 'Flag Change' scheme What a waist of money!
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