IF companies like Airbus and Boeing manufactured aphorisms as well as aircraft, then “bigger is better” would be the latest off the production line. The principle of expansion was dramatically demonstrated late last year when Boeing bought out McDonnell Douglas, itself a giant of US industry, but one whose civil aviation ventures failed to pull out of a steep descent.

Airbus and Boeing are left as the only two world-class companies building passenger aircraft, and in Birds of PreyMatthew Lynn charts their growth and rivalry. Curiously, what emerges is that even in the highest of high-tech industries, it is not what you sell but how you sell it that makes the difference.

Lynn starts with an entertaining history of the industry, from the time half a century ago when Britain had a strong start in jet engine technology thanks to Frank Whittle. This led to the development of the Comet, the world’s first jet airliner, whose commercial prospects were destroyed by a series of crashes caused by metal fatigue. Boeing moved rapidly to produce the 707, which eventually became a commercial success.

The next round in the battle for the airways looked as though it would go to Europe, when Britain and France worked together to overcome formidable technical challenges to produce of Concorde.

Eventually, Boeing came up with what the airlines really wanted: the 747. It nearly bankrupted the company but, when the 747 made its first commercial flight in 1970 it completed a family of aircraft for Boeing that could meet the needs of any airline. However, that year was significant for another reason-Airbus Industrie was born. It had small offices and little money, but big ideas about challenging America’s dominance.

Airbus also spotted a gap in the market: the need for a long-range, wide-bodied twin-jet. The A300 was the company’s answer, but there was a problem with attaching the engines to the wing, one of the most complicated pieces of engineering on the plane. Airbus approached America’s McDonnell Douglas, which cheerfully hastened the success of a rival and its own downfall.

Not only did the A300 turn out to be a successful airliner, it validated the idea of the long-range twin-which was cheaper to fly than McDonnell Douglas’s three-engined DC-10 or Boeing’s four-engined 747.

These aircraft, together with the A310 variant of the A300, all relied on well-established technologies. But for its next aircraft, the smaller A320 twin-jet, Airbus took a brave step forward and introduced fly-by-wire, which until then had been the preserve of military aircraft. Boeing was not impressed. “Airbus is not going to sell a lot of airplanes by touting technology,” commented a senior designer, and there was some truth in this, as Lynn’s book makes clear.

But when it came to selling, Airbus could always count on the support of senior politicians from the partner-countries of France, Germany, Britain and Spain. Airbus became a real irritant to Boeing when airlines found they could play off one company against the other to get the best deals.

The airlines also had an attractive range of aircraft to choose from. Boeing produced its 767 in response to the A300; Airbus developed its A330 twin-jet and a four-engined variant, the A340; and Boeing came up with the 777, bringing in the fly-by-wire technology about which it had been so dismissive. Next may come the “Super Jumbos”, and Airbus says its A3XX, carrying 550-650 passengers, will enter service in 2003.

If it had not been for Airbus, civil aviation might have become a monopoly of one company, Boeing, and one country, the US. Now airlines have some choice, and this arrangement seems set to continue for a while-until the ideas of both companies become so big that they have to collaborate to make them a reality.

At night, helicopter pilots descending more or less vertically onto a conventionally lit landing area can experience what they call a “black hole” effect: the points of light do not appear to change in shape or size, making it difficult to judge the height and rate of descent of the helicopter. Metalite Aviation Lighting of Birmingham says its panels could be the solution.

The panels rely on a thick layer of a compound that glows when it is electrified. The chemical make-up of the compound is a commercial secret. The luminous layer is sandwiched between a foil back, which acts as one electrode, and a transparent plastic front with a wire wrapped around three sides, which acts as the second electrode.

The whole sandwich is less than 1 millimetre thick, but for strength and protection it is sealed in fibreglass and mounted in an aluminium panel 120 centimetres long, 12 centimetres wide and 2 centimetres thick. The panels are laid with gaps between them to form luminous broken lines. Because they have such a distinctive shape compared with conventional lights, the panels make it much easier for pilots to gauge their approach.

The Defence Research Agency and the Royal Navy have carried out a successful preliminary trial on board the frigate Andromeda, and there will be a further trial early next year to decide how best to lay out the panels.

The Civil Aviation Authority and DRA have also been involved in a trial on Marathon Oil’s Brae Bravo rig, and the panels are undergoing the stringent safety tests required for all oil rig equipment.

The panels need very little power. Metalite has suggested that they could be permanently set up on the top of tall buildings to guide rescue helicopters in the event of a fire.

In the hope of finding a cheaper alternative, the Civil Aviation Authority contracted Smith System Engineering to investigate the use of solar cells to spot the flashing anticollision strobe lights carried by all aircraft. The company has come up with a system based around eight solar cells mounted on the outside of a plane. The coverage of each cell overlaps with others, and this overlapping coverage is provided in all directions around the plane.

The signals from the solar cells are amplified and cleaned up electronically and fed to a microprocessor. Because of the overlapping coverage, the device detects the direction of a nearby plane to within 30 degrees, with very few false alarms.

The cockpit display shows the user’s plane surrounded by a ring of lights. Pilots are warned of approaching aircraft by an audible warning and a light showing them which way to look.

A prototype device is now being tried out. In the worst conditions of low visibility and high ambient light it spotted the strobe on another light aircraft 2.5 kilometres away, giving the pilot 19 seconds to react. The more powerful light on a high speed military jet was detected at 5 kilometres, but the jet’s speed allowed the pilot only 16 seconds to react. Nevertheless, both results are better than the 12 seconds that research suggests is the minimum time required by pilots to respond properly to an emergency.

The device should be available in a couple of years and, to appeal to the owners of light aircraft, the whole package will cost about ÂŁ500.

Datacast was developed by BBC engineers in the early 1980s and, like
the news and information service Ceefax, is transmitted on lines which are
not used by the TV picture. This British invention was gradually developed
and expanded by the BBC and ITV. Broadcasters in Europe, Australia and the
Far East have also adopted the system and several now carry commercial data
alongside the public service.

The ingenuity of Teletext is that the information is simply fed in
at a single central point – in the case of the BBC, at Television Centre
in west London. From there it gets a free ride on the back of the TV signal,
and can be decoded anywhere the signal is received.

While Teletext can be picked up on most ordinary TV sets, Datacast requires
special decoders which the BBC’s customers have to supply themselves. They
then feed their information to Television Centre, where the BBC has to do
little more than send the information down an existing electronic pipeline.
Its costs have been minimal compared to its earnings.

Among the BBC’s customers is the Stock Exchange, which uses Datacast
to carry up-to-the-minute share prices for subscribers to its Market Eye
service. Another user is the bookmaker Coral, whose betting shops are fed
racing odds and results.

While the BBC is honouring existing contracts, no new commercial customers
are being taken on. This follows a decision that the use of the blank lines
must, in the words of a spokeswoman, ‘be restricted to activities closely
related to BBC programming’. Sources within the BBC see the demise of Datacast
as an accidental consequence of this decision.

There are hints of a forthcoming announcement concerning interactive
television and electronic listings. The suggestion from a BBC spokesperson
was to ‘watch this space’ – of which, there will be increasing amounts on
Datacast.

Air traffic controllers on both sides of the Atlantic are also concerned
about TCAS 2 (Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System) because it raises
the problem of who is in control in a complex and fast-moving environment.
The FAA says pilots must follow the on-board advice given by the system.
But David Harrison, the CAA’s head of collision avoidance, claims that TCAS
can create or exacerbate dangers.

In one case in the US 18 months ago, the flight paths of two TCAS-equipped
aircraft were converging at similar altitudes. The TCAS system warned the
pilots just as the ground controller issued instructions to the planes to
stop them colliding, telling one to climb and the other to descend. One
pilot followed the ground instructions but the other followed those produced
automatically by TCAS; both planes continued climbing and converging. Luckily,
the one with the faster climb rate had begun its climb at a slightly higher
altitude, and the two passed safely.

Richard Dawson, a spokesman for the Guild of Air Traffic Controllers
in Britain, representing almost all the 1300 British ATCs, says, ‘We are
unhappy about TCAS because there’s no clear understanding of who is primarily
responsible for flight safety. For this reason, we support the CAA’s approach.’

Tom Williamson, the FAA’s project manager for research and development
on TCAS, says the system is performing as designed, and making travel significantly
safer for the public.

TCAS 2 is installed on board aircraft, and costs about ÂŁ100 000.
It hooks into the aircraft’s own navigation system and relies on the fact
that almost all commercial and military aircraft have a transponder which
responds to a radar signal by transmitting the aircraft’s identity and altitude.
These are displayed on a ground controller’s radar screen beside the appropriate
‘bąôžąąč’.

The standard separation between aircraft in flight is meant to be 1000
feet (300 metres) vertically, and 3 to 5 nautical miles (5.5 to 9 kilometres)
horizontally. TCAS 2 creates a ‘surveillance bubble’ stretching about 30
nautical miles around a plane, and at least 3000 feet above and below it.
This area is scanned once a second by a TCAS transmitter/receiver, which
triggers the transponders on any other aircraft. Each TCAS can analyse up
to 30 responses and, using their position and velocity, decide if another
plane is in danger of coming too close. Planes which pose no threat show
up as a pale blue diamond on the TCAS 2 display.

Any plane within 6 nautical miles and 1200 feet becomes a ‘proximity
intruder’. Any plane that the processor decides will infringe standard separation
in the next 35 to 45 seconds becomes a yellow circle on the display, with
an arrow showing whether it is climbing or descending. A synthesised voice
also warns the crew ‘Traffic, traffic’.

If the system decides the plane will be dangerously close in 20 to 30
seconds, the yellow circle becomes a red square and the system tells the
pilot to take evasive action – to descend or climb, depending on circumstances.
One of the limitations of TCAS 2 is that it only advises a change of altitude,
not of direction.

The FAA and equipment manufacturers have been working for months on
TCAS 3, which is intended to be capable of instructing pilots to turn to
avoid crashes too. But this project has been abandoned because it could
not be made sufficiently accurate at a reasonable price.

TCAS 1 – a cut-down variant of TCAS 2 which issues warnings but does
not give advice on avoidance – was to become mandatory in the US early in
1995 for commercial aircraft with between 10 and 30 seats. However, high
manufacturing costs have delayed this development.

In Britain, many aircraft are already fitted with TCAS 2 because they
fly into American airspace. One such is the Britannia Airways Boeing 767
involved in a near miss over Spain on 19 October.

In this incident, the plane was climbing away from Palma, Majorca, on
its way to Gatwick with 284 people aboard when its TCAS 2 emitted a traffic
warning as it passed through 9000 feet. Shortly afterwards, it told the
crew to ‘monitor vertical speed’. As the plane ascended to 9400 feet, it
gave an instruction to ‘descend, descend’. The crew did so, and the plane
passed about a mile from another British airliner coming in at 10 000 feet.
Britannia says this clearly indicated the merits of TCAS, and its pilots
have been told to use the system wherever they are flying.

The CAA accepts that this and other recent incidents could put pressure
on it to reach a decision, but is determined to complete its investigations
first. One of the most important of these is a theoretical application
of TCAS to six months’ worth of radar data from British airports to see
how it would have performed. Separately, the CAA is analysing every TCAS
incident recorded by pilots. The radar modelling will be finished in six
months, with a full safety study completed in 18 months.

Harrison says that the CAA must be certain that TCAS will work properly
in Britain, where aircraft must climb and descend much more frequently
than in the US. It is also concerned about the number of unnecessary warnings,
though recent upgrades in TCAS software have cut these by half.

The CAA’s principal defence against calls for early implementation of
TCAS is that there has been no major loss of life from a mid-air collision
in Europe since 1976, despite a doubling in air traffic.

The manufacturer, UCC International of Thetford in Norfolk, also believes
that the device will have widespread applications in the construction and
mining industries which rely heavily on equipment that is hydraulically
operated. The fact that such machinery could be kept running while samples
are taken would save money too.

In a modern jet aircraft, such as a Tornado, the hydraulic systems are
driven from the plane’s engines. Particles of metal and metal oxide originating
from oil storage vessels and from general wear of plane components can cause
catastrophic failures if they build up in the fluid and damage critical
components such as pumps, valves or actuators. So engineers must ensure
that the hydraulic oil is scrupulously clean.

Steve Dickens, a technical manager at UCC, explains that during maintenance
in the hangar, the hydraulic oil is piped to a portable service trolley
where, until now, samples have been taken and then sent to a laboratory.
By contrast, the new device monitors the quality of the oil as it is circulated
through the service trolley. Engineers plug the portable monitor into a
pair of specially inserted ports in the pipe and it draws off a small quantity
of fluid through one of the ports while the trolley operates.

A dual direction pump in the monitor enables it to return the previous
sample through the other port at the same time as a new one is being taken,
avoiding the need to dispose of the fluid. The monitor prints a report on
oil quality in minutes.

Inside the monitor, the fluid passes at a constant rate past a very
small window through which a beam of light shines. Directly opposite, a
lens focuses the beam onto a photo diode. When a contaminant particle passes,
its shadow causes the output voltage of the photo diode to drop. The slump
in voltage reflects the width of the particle, while the amount of time
it takes to pass shows its length.

To fit in with international standards, the monitor reports the number
of particles it sees in each of four bands ranging from greater than 50
microns down to greater than 5 microns. In heavy industrial applications,
the recommended limit is no more than a quarter of a million particles per
100 millilitres in the 5 to 15 micron range; in aviation the total should
not exceed 16 000.

Traditionally, the RAF changes filters in the hydraulic system after
a set period of use. Before a three month-trial involving 28 service trollies,
168 filters were scheduled to be replaced. Yet analysis of the hydraulic
fluid with the new analyser showed that only eight had to be changed.

The RAF has ordered kits for three of its Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport
aircraft, which are used to fly in and out of Sarajevo. Work begins at the
end of this month to fit six planes to take the armour, so that the kits
can be changed from one plane to another as necessary. The US Air Force
has also ordered a similar number of kits for its own transport planes.

Developed by Aero Consultants (UK) based in Huntingdon, the ballistic
armour, called Armourtek, consists of glass ceramic tiles bonded with adhesive
to a multi-ply laminate which can be formed into flat sheets or moulded
to produce curved surfaces. The sheets are 14.5 millimetres thick and weigh
26.4 kilograms per square metre, about half the weight of steel armour providing
similar protection.

At present the only protection the crews have is titanium sheets fitted
under their seats. The new armour covers the floor and sides of the flight
deck as well as the crew seats. The company claims that this provides total
protection against high-velocity, small-arms fire.

When a high-velocity round hits the ceramic layer, it is extensively
damaged and begins to break up. Although the ceramic material is pulverised,
the bullet very rapidly loses most of its kinetic energy as it penetrates
the layer. The remaining energy is absorbed by the multi-ply laminate which
deforms but contains all the fragments. This leaves a small entrance hole
on the outside of the armour but a wide, shallow bulge on the inside.

Various ceramic materials have previously been used in the production
of armour. Silicon carbide is nine times more expensive per square metre
than steel armour, but is lighter and more effective, making it relatively
cheap. Boron carbide is 12 times more expensive than steel, but has the
advantage of being even lighter than silicon carbide. Glass ceramics are
now thought to offer the greatest potential. Wilf Bishop, technical director
of Aero Consultants, says that the company has hit on a combination of
ceramic, adhesive and laminate giving an armour that offers high protection
at low weight and cost.