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For those of you who haven't heard of it, the Avro Jetliner was built in Canada and was the second jet powered passenger aircraft in the history of aviation. It was beaten into the air by six days by another aircraft from de Havailland, but the general thought was that the Jetliner was preferable: and one reason was because of the catchy name.

'Jetliner' became a name almost like 'Band-aid,' synonymous with not just a certain brand but an entire type of product. The shame of it all was, production on the Avro Jetliner was halted due to the outbreak of the Korean War when Avro moved it's line over to war production.

Numerous companies were interested in the aircraft. Howard Hughes, it could be said, was obsessed with it and even bought the sole flying copy left to use as a private jet.

"But what does this have to do with ANYTHING?" You ask, o kind reader...well, I'll tell you: when the Jetliner project went the way of the dodo, Avro was completely dependent on military contracts and without any civilian income. It's sole aircraft that it was marketing was the CF-100 Canuck, to the RCAF and to either the Dutch or Belgian air force (I can't remember which).

This put the company in a very akward position with the Avro Arrow: there were not many financial reserves in it's coffers for when the project fell on hard times: it was forced to go back to the Canadian government again and again as it had literally no other income. It's customer base was the Royal Canadian Air Force, and through that the Canadian government and taxpayers.

But had they kept the Jetliner, if for example the Korean War been delayed or not happened at all, then there were fairly concrete orders from multiple companies. Avro could've gotten in on the ground floor of civilian jet aviation and given itself an independent money stream away from the government of Canada.

And when the time came for the Arrow, the company would be on much firmer financial ground.
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