World Business: The Cost of Keeping Up

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Center of attraction at Britain's Farnborough air show last week was none of the fast new aircraft roaring overhead but an 11-ft. groundling: the first publicly displayed model of the 100-passenger, Mach 2.2 Super Caravelle that British Aircraft Corp. and France's Sud Aviation propose to build jointly. Though design of the delta-wing plane is completed and current plans call for flight tests in 1966, final approval of the project is yet to come from the British and French governments.

There is still plenty of argument about whether that approval should be given, since development of the Super Caravelle is expected to cost in the neighborhood of $560 million. Some British planemakers say that the money would be better spent increasing the all-weather reliability of existing subsonic aircraft. But with U.S. planemakers working toward a Mach 3 airliner and Russian competition in supersonic air transport only a matter of time, BAG and Sud Aviation argue that the Super Caravelle is needed to assure Europe a continuing role in the long-haul civil aviation industry.