Every Jetliner Ever Made: British Aerospace and Comac

Let's have a look at Every Jetliner Ever Made, in alphabetical order, with Airbus and Boeing at the end, otherwise this series of articles would be incredibly top-heavy, just like internet glamour legend Diamond Jackson, but with aeroplanes. This week we're going to look at British Aerospace, from the United Kingdom, and Comac, from China.

Or is it COMAC? I think it's COMAC. This is going to be short, because British Aerospace only made one airliner, and COMAC's history is not yet written. I could have padded it out by putting Convair at the end, but then it would have been too long. I begin.

A Convair 880, which appears in the next post.

BRITISH AEROSPACE / BAe (Great Britain)

The component parts of British Aerospace developed several jetliners, and British Aerospace's predecessor, BAC, developed several more, but there was only one jetliner with British Aerospace branding, and it was the 146 regional jet of the 1980s.

Throughout the 20th Century all of Britain's big manufacturing industries faced more or less the same basic problem. Whether it was the car industry, the film industry, steel, aeroplanes, nuclear power, space rockets, music, canned meat, beer, comics, music etc. Britain is an awkward size. The country is big enough and rich enough to make things, but not big or rich enough to sustain a large domestic market, and not rich or powerful enough to force the rest of the world to bend to its will. There was a time when politicians in foreign lands begged us not to put tariffs on their goods. By the 1980s no-one cared.

HMS Warspite, blowing things up

British used to be powerful enough to bend the rest of the world to its will. But a combination of the rise of Japan as a naval force, the enormous debts accrued by two massive wars, the subsequent rise of the United States and the Soviet Union as global superpowers, and the fact that post-war colonialism was not a good look, none of those things helped. Now we can merely ask that the world bends to our will, in exchange for the chance to sit next to David Beckham at Wimbledon or perhaps a knighthood. We can't use force any more, at least not without asking the United States if we could borrow some of their transport aircraft, at which point the United States would probably say "knock it off".

In the post-war years it became apparent that the costs involved in developing jet engines, guided missiles, computerised flight control systems, nuclear weapon systems, space rockets etc was an order of magnitude higher than the costs involved in developing fabric-and-metal monoplanes, and so the UK government asked Vickers, Bristol, Avro, and Hunting to merge with each other so that Britain's aviation industry would be big and strong. This entity became the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC).

The BAC 1-11 jetliner was a modest hit, the BAC/Vickers VC-10 and the BAC Concorde less so, although they were fantastic aircraft. Meanwhile Hawker Siddeley, who had resisted being merged into BAC, had its own successes and failures with the Hawker 748 regional turboprop and the Trident jetliner. In 1977 the UK government merged Hawker and BAC to form British Aerospace, presumably in the hope that this new entity would be even bigger and stronger than BAC and Hawker separately, although there was also an element of political dogmatism about the merger.

British Aerospace existed from 1977 until 1999, at which point it bought Marconi and became BAE Systems, which still exists today and is in rude health, but during its 22-year life British Aerospace only produced one airliner, the BAe 146. Development began in the early 1970s, in fits and starts, under Hawker Siddeley, but the prototype didn't make its first flight until 1981.

In the early 1970s the idea of a jet-powered regional airliner was cutting-edge, although Hawker-Siddeley called it a "feederliner" rather than a regional jet. The short-range market was at the time dominated by turboprops, and a few holdovers from the piston age, but passengers consistently preferred jets, which were faster and could fly higher.

The HS 146, as it was originally called, had more or less the same specification as later regional jets from Bombardier and Embraer - a passenger capacity of around eighty people, with a range of around two thousand miles - but with high-mounted wings and a T-tail, all chosen to enable the 146 to use poor-quality runways. And unusually it had four engines rather than two, which was a consequence of its genesis in the early 1970s. The design emerged just as Lycoming of the United States was putting the finishing touches on the ALF 502, an innovative turbofan engine fitted with a gearbox that kept the fan spinning at subsonic speeds, which greatly reduced engine noise. Hawker decided to build the 146 around Lycoming's new engine.

The 502 had about a third more power than the nearest competitor, the Garrett TFE731, but it still only had around 7000lb of thrust, which was two-thirds to a half that of the engines that powered small, full-sized jetliners. As a consequence Hawker needed to fit the 146 with four engines to ensure a safe margin in case of engine failure.

The choice of four engines was controversial, but it gave the 146 good acceleration, a power reserve in case of engine failure, quiet operation, and a short takeoff run. With a run of around 3,000 feet the 146 needed less than half the runway length of a Boeing 737. By coincidence this made it an ideal fit for London City Airport, which opened in 1988, a few years after the 146 entered service, and it quickly became a common sight at that airport.

Nonetheless the aircraft ended up as a niche product, selling in small quantities to a variety of operators rather than having large orders. With four engines its fuel consumption was on a par with a small, twin-engined jetliner, and the introduction of the short-field Airbus A318 in the early 1990s eliminated some of its raison d'etre. The A318 could also take off from London City Airport, and had a larger cabin and a longer range.

Throughout its life sales were modest, but steady, with the 146 winning orders from regional airlines in Australia, Europe, and the United States. It was also selected by the Royal Air Force as a freighter, where its performance later proved useful in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, and as a VIP transport, where it was used as part of the Queen's flight. Quite infamously Prince Charles - as he was then - overran the runway while landing in the Inner Hebrides in 1994, apparently after asking the Captain if he could have a turn at the controls. No-one was seriously injured but it was a major source of embarrassment for all concerned. In 2017 a late-model 146 flew from Cape Town in South Africa to St Helena in the Atlantic Ocean to pick up a bunch of passengers who had been stranded when their ship broke down, in the process becoming the first commercial jet flight from Africa to the island.

British Aerospace stretched the 146 twice, with the 146-200 and -300 increasing passenger load to roughly one hundred and one hundred and ten passengers respectively, with range dropping from two thousand miles to around eighteen hundred. Depending on the route the aircraft was often flown with a reduced passenger load or less fuel, or both. Initial production of the BAe 146 wound down in the 1990s, at which point it was then sold, in modified form, as the Avro RJ. The RJ75, RJ85, and RJ100 were similar to the 146-100, 146-200, and 146-300, but with more fuel-efficient engines and improved interiors. Despite the completely new name they were essentially the same aircraft, and that particular version of Avro was really just a subsidiary of BAe based in Manchester. The general internet consensus is that it was an attempt to fool buyers in the United States that the 146 was an American aircraft, or at least Canadian.

Ultimately BAe and its Avro subsidiary sold almost four hundred 146s, making it the most popular British jetliner of all time. As of 2024 the 146 is slowly leaving passenger service, although it remains a popular cargo aircraft and fire-bomber on account of its short take-off run and unusually high engine power.

COMAC (China)

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China was founded in 2008 as part of a government initiative to kickstart the domestic airline industry. In the 1970s the Chinese civil aviation authority developed a clone of the Boeing 707, the Shanghai Y-10, but although the resulting aircraft made a series of publicity flights it never entered series production, because the underlying design was twenty years old. China's state airline instead bought a mixture of Russian, British, and eventually US and European designs, and as of this writing Air China has a mixed fleet of Boeing and Airbus airliners.

A COMAC ARJ21, original by N509FZ

But the Chinese government decided that long-term reliance on foreign suppliers was a bad idea, and so COMAC was formed in the early 2000s. Its first product was the ARJ21, which was launched in 2008 and is still in production. It has the classic configuration of a regional jet, with twin rear-mounted engines - US-designed General Electric CF34 turbofans - and a T-tail. The configuration is very similar to the Douglas DC-9, and indeed COMAC had in the past signed a deal to licence-produce DC-9s, but the ARJ21 has wings developed by Antonov of Ukraine and a new nosecone.

It carries a passenger load of 80-100 people, with a range of 1,400 miles. Since 2008 COMAC has only managed to sell just over 100 units, all within China, not helped by a general decline in the regional jet market.

Does it sound as though I'm rushing? There are only around a hundred ARJ21s, and they only fly within China, and I have to admit that I've never seen one or been in one. The general industry trend has been away from smaller jetliners to larger, more flexible designs - but not too large, as Airbus discovered with the A380 - so in the early 2010s COMAC expanded their range with the C919.

A COMAC C919, original by N509FZ

The C919 is conceptually similar to Russia's Sukhoi MC-21, in the sense that it's an attempt to make a domestic analogue of the hugely popular Boeing 737 or Airbus A320. The C919 is however smaller than those two airliners, with a passenger load of 150-190 and a much shorter range of only 2,500 miles, although an extended-range, 3,500 mile model has been mooted. Tibet Airlines has ordered a special variant with a shortened fuselage and reinforced landing gear, optimised for high-altitude runways.

As of 2024 ten airframes are in operation with airlines in China, although there are apparently over a thousand orders on the books. General internet consensus has it that the design lags behind modern versions of the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737, but only by a single generation. There is an implication that the C919's successor will be directly competitive with Western designs, and it will be interesting to see how it does on the international market.

And that's British Aerospace and COMAC. Next, Convair and Dassault. Or Concorde. Or Concorde and Convair. I don't know yet.