Could Jetliner Duopoly Being Avoided?

OTL Lockheed got into the aluminum airliner business during the 1930s, with their L-10 Electra.
After WW2, Lockheed's Constellation was "the best three-engine airplane flying the North Atlantic Route." ... er ... Lockheed took a while to work all the bugs out of last generation of incredibly complex turbo-compound piston engines. This line of 2 and 4 propeller-liner tradition continued up to the 4-turboprop Electra (military P-3 Orion long-range patrol plane) of the 1960s. Lockheed only made one foray into the jet airliner business with their tri-jet L-1011 Tri-Star. The L-1011 suffered from two problems, small wings and the fact that tri-jets were a short-term phenomenon. Small wings were a design error early in the "sizing" process. Small wings improved cruise performance on one route, but limited future growth/stretches, etc. Once tri-jets proved "X" million hours of trouble-free, long-range operations, they set the stage for Extended Twin Engine Operations across oceans.
During the same ear, airlines pressed manufacturers to automate more and more flight operations so that they could reduce the numbers of highly-paid, unionized aircrew. Navigators were replaced by Global Positioning Systems and flight engineers were replaced by Full Authority Digital Engine Controls. Modern auto-pilots and flight management systems are so sophisticated that pilots are just back-ups to electronic systems. Pilots no longer have to touch stick-and-rudder during normal operations. Airlines continue to lobby for "remote co-pilots."
After the L-1011, Lockheed returned to more lucrative military contracts. During massive defense cutbacks in the wake of the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Lockheed was forced to merge with (defense contractor) Martin. Martin built a variety of twin-engine commuter planes during the 1950s.

AVRO Canada's pioneering Jetliner was doomed by unrealistic expectations by its sole customer: Trans-Canada Airlines. None of the early jet engines could have provided the fuel economy demanded by TCA. AVRO Canada's Arrow jet fighter was doomed by similarly unrealistic expectations from its sole customer: the royal Canadian Air Force.

Bombardier/Canadair got its start in the airliner business license-building foreign designs for the RCAF: DC-4s, North Stars, Bristol Britannias, Cosmopolitans, etc. Eventually, Canadair teamed with Bill Lear to build a larger business jet, which evolved into the top-tier Canadair Challenger and stretched versions which evolved into commuter airliners.
Bombardier also bought out deHavilland of Canada, but by then DHC was only building Dash-8 turbo-prop commuter liners.
Embraer of Brazil got its start with the Bandierante twin-turboprop, which filled a market niche between DHC's Twin Otter and Beechcraft's 99 (stretched King Air turboprop). Embraer eventually developed several lines of business jets and stretched them into commuter liners.
 
I have an essay in the works where the Douglas-Lockheed doupoly of the 1950s, Boeing-Douglas duopoly of the 1960s and 1970s and Airbus-Boeing duopoly from the 1980s onward are replaced by a British monopoly in the 1950s and that evolves into a British dominated European consortium that dominates western civil aviation from the 1960s onwards.

In the 1950s British firms dominate the world airliner market as they once dominated merchant shipbuilding (and in an associated timeline they do that for longer too).

I'd love to read that as well, although my suspicion is that if things happen that way you are going to end up with the US government propping up production this side of the Atlantic with some kind of consolidation.
 
I'd love to read that as well, although my suspicion is that if things happen that way you are going to end up with the US government propping up production this side of the Atlantic with some kind of consolidation.

Given the US' large need for military transport, cargo and tanker aircraft, the development costs would, as they were with the 707/KC-135, be split between the military and civilian programs. There is simply no way the US is going to be dependent on foreign suppliers, even from as close an ally as Britain, for its military airlift needs, so something will emerge on the US side that can be adapted for civil transport.

It's also important to remember that the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) was and is a significant reserve airlift component for the US military, comprised of civilian passenger and cargo aircraft. In the context of the Cold War, civilian passenger and cargo aircraft were considered important components of defense mobilization and readiness.
 
Given the US' large need for military transport, cargo and tanker aircraft, the development costs would, as they were with the 707/KC-135, be split between the military and civilian programs. There is simply no way the US is going to be dependent on foreign suppliers, even from as close an ally as Britain, for its military airlift needs, so something will emerge on the US side that can be adapted for civil transport.

It's also important to remember that the Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) was and is a significant reserve airlift component for the US military, comprised of civilian passenger and cargo aircraft. In the context of the Cold War, civilian passenger and cargo aircraft were considered important components of defense mobilization and readiness.

True as far as it goes, but the KC-135 is not precisely the same thing as a 707. I don't have a hard time imagining a series of strategic missteps in which the 707 becomes a much more mediocre aircraft while Douglas and Lockheed put together turboprop variants of the DC-7 and Constellation. This opens the door pretty wide for the V-1000 to dominate the early market, and that in itself will make selling later products overseas a lot easier (and help negate the tendency of British aerospace be completely oriented to BOAC and BEA specifications that screwed the Trident, VC-10 and others).

Certainly Air Force requirements will keep some capability alive, but CRAF cares about ownership much more than it does airframes. I have a hard time seeing congress putting serious barriers to airlines getting V-1000s and other British products and putting them in the pool. At the same time, if American aerospace ends up dominated by the military while the British aren't, I can imagine a series of aircraft the airlines just don't like. Imagine the results if Boeing lost it's shirt on the 707 (probably not as badly as Convair, but thats the kind of path I'm thinking), Douglas committed to turboprops until the DC-9 and Lockheed is selling commercialized Starlifters and Galaxies at the same time the British have the V-1000 performing as OTL's 707, the Trident is available sooner and directly comparable to the 727 and the 1-11 gets upgraded much more enthusiastically. It's not going to improve matters when the first widebody (at least that isn't a direct variant of the Galaxy) ends up a twin. I suspect the best scenario for the US at this point is Douglas eking out a distant third behind the British and whatever happens in continental Europe with a DC-9 like competitor to the 1-11 and a widebody trijet in the days before ETOPS and modern high bypass engines made twin widebodies really suitable for all missions.
 
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Apollo 20 said:
There is simply no way the US is going to be dependent on foreign suppliers, even from as close an ally as Britain, for its military airlift needs
That's an intriguing statement, since USAF offered to buy a tanker variant of the Avro C.102 back around '49...

And had TCA management not been insane,:eek::rolleyes: & C. D. Howe a nitwit,:rolleyes: the C.102 (first flight less than two months after the DH.106) could have been the dominant short/medium-haul jetliner in the world before the 727 ever appeared.:cool::cool:
 
I personally think if McDonnell-Douglas or Lockheed had decided to built a twin-jet widebody airliner derived from the DC-10 or L1011, both companies would have continued to build airliners much longer. By the early 1980's, more powerful versions of the JT9D, CF6 and RB.211 engines became available, which made twin-engine widebody airliners a lot more viable. But Boeing got their first with the 767 and better engines improved the prospects of the A300B, and as such that's why Airbus and Boeing started to take over the market in the 1980's, especially with the Boeing 737 models powered by the CFM56 engines and the development of the Airbus A320 Family of single-aisle airliners.
 
True as far as it goes, but the KC-135 is not precisely the same thing as a 707. I don't have a hard time imagining a series of strategic missteps in which the 707 becomes a much more mediocre aircraft while Douglas and Lockheed put together turboprop variants of the DC-7 and Constellation. This opens the door pretty wide for the V-1000 to dominate the early market, and that in itself will make selling later products overseas a lot easier (and help negate the tendency of British aerospace be completely oriented to BOAC and BEA specifications that screwed the Trident, VC-10 and others).

Certainly Air Force requirements will keep some capability alive, but CRAF cares about ownership much more than it does airframes. I have a hard time seeing congress putting serious barriers to airlines getting V-1000s and other British products and putting them in the pool. At the same time, if American aerospace ends up dominated by the military while the British aren't, I can imagine a series of aircraft the airlines just don't like. Imagine the results if Boeing lost it's shirt on the 707 (probably not as badly as Convair, but thats the kind of path I'm thinking), Douglas committed to turboprops until the DC-9 and Lockheed is selling commercialized Starlifters and Galaxies at the same time the British have the V-1000 performing as OTL's 707, the Trident is available sooner and directly comparable to the 727 and the 1-11 gets upgraded much more enthusiastically. It's not going to improve matters when the first widebody (at least that isn't a direct variant of the Galaxy) ends up a twin. I suspect the best scenario for the US at this point is Douglas eking out a distant third behind the British and whatever happens in continental Europe with a DC-9 like competitor to the 1-11 and a widebody trijet in the days before ETOPS and modern high bypass engines made twin widebodies really suitable for all missions.

After reading up a bit on the V-1000, you make a good case; it's a really amazing story. OTOH, the 707 and DC-8 were really good robust airframes that lasted far longer than their design life. A lot of things would have had to go wrong for both the DC-8 and 707 programs to fail.
 
IIRC early proposals for the Boeing 707 had it with two-by-two seating before they found out that one of their competitors, Douglas I think it was, was planning on offering their competing aircraft with three-by-two seating which along with talks with the airlines caused them to switch to this, only to later hear that another competitor, Vickers I believe, was proposing three-by-three seating so the fuselage was again expanded slightly to match this. Perhaps if Vickers had kept their plans more tightly under wraps whilst Boeing introduces their aircraft first Vickers get to introduce the first three-by-three airliner which whilst a year or so later into service is potentially more appealing and helps keeps them in the game?
 
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