BAe 146

The 146 began in August 1973, when Hawker Siddeley launched the HS.146 project: a seventy-seat airliner meant to fill the gap between the turboprops of the day — its own HS.748, the Fokker F27 — and small jets such as the BAC One-Eleven and the Boeing 737. The chosen configuration, a high wing and a T-tail, was aimed at short-field performance, and the powerplant was four Avco Lycoming ALF 502H turbofans of 6,500 lbf. The British government agreed to fund half the development in exchange for a share of the revenue from every aircraft sold, but in October 1974, with the recession triggered by the oil crisis, all work stopped. The project survived on a low flame until British Aerospace, Hawker Siddeley's successor, relaunched it in 1978.

Fitting four engines to such a small aircraft was controversial from the start, and it was the engine that dictated it: the ALF 502, rugged, quiet and fuel-efficient, could not on its own deliver the power and range the concept demanded. British Aerospace turned the drawback into a selling point, advertising exceptional three-engine performance that appealed to operators in mountainous country and at hot, high or poor-surface airfields. The rest of the design was deliberately simple: a high wing with an uninterrupted upper surface and no leading-edge devices, a fixed tailplane, and no thrust reversers — in their place a large two-petal airbrake below the rudder, usable in flight, and full-width spoilers that deploy on touchdown. It was the second aircraft after Concorde to use carbon brakes.

The first aircraft took off from Hatfield on 3 September 1981, quickly followed by two more prototypes, with better take-off and climb figures than predicted. The 146-200 then cost eleven million pounds and the programme had absorbed 350 million; in 1982 British Aerospace reckoned it needed to sell 250 aircraft to break even. The Certificate of Airworthiness came on 8 February 1983 and in May Dan-Air flew the first revenue service, between London Gatwick and Bern. The press hailed it as the world's quietest jetliner and the manufacturer sold it as the Whisperjet.

That quietness, together with short-field capability, opened airports no other jet could use. In 1985 Aspen Airways used a 146-100 to inaugurate the first scheduled jet service into Aspen, in the Rockies, from an airfield 7,820 feet above sea level, and in January 1987 the type was chosen to launch jet services from London City, with its steep approach and short runway: for years it was the only conventional jet able to work there. Pacific Southwest Airlines received the first of its twenty aircraft on 1 July 1984, Air Wisconsin replaced its Fokker F27s with it, and in Australia it became the aircraft of long, thin routes, with eighteen in service with Ansett in 1999 and a career that lasted until National Jet Express ended passenger operations in June 2022, after 32 years and 33 aircraft of the type. The Royal Air Force flew it as a VIP transport from 1986 to 2022.

In 1993 the original series gave way to the Avro RJ, built at Woodford by Avro International Aerospace: higher-thrust LF 507 engines in redesigned nacelles, an EFIS flight deck and three sizes matching the earlier ones, RJ70, RJ85 and RJ100. Production was spread across the country — rear fuselage at Chadderton, centre section at Filton, fin at Brough, engine pylons at Prestwick — and beyond it: the wings came from Textron in the United States and the tailplane from Saab-Scania in Sweden. The engines, however, brought trouble. Derived from the T55 turboshaft of the Chinook helicopter, the ALF 502 owed its quietness to a geared fan that kept blade tip speed below the speed of sound, but its electronics could overheat and shut an engine down automatically with no inflight relight, and rare atmospheric conditions could cause thrust loss through internal icing. Fume events, in which irritant vapours reached the cabin through the pressurisation system, added to the record.

The end came with the RJX, a third generation powered by Honeywell AS977 turbofans promising 15% lower fuel burn and 17% more range. The RJX85 prototype flew on 28 April 2001 and the RJX100 on 23 September, but on 27 November BAE Systems cancelled the programme and closed its regional aircraft business, with 1,669 job losses and a £400m charge; the division had already forced a £1bn write-off in 1992. The last Avro RJs were delivered in late 2003. In all, 394 aircraft were built: 221 BAe 146s, 170 Avro RJs and the three RJXs.

With the line closed, the type kept flying. The QT Quiet Trader freighters and QC convertibles found their niche at curfew-restricted airports, 146-200s and RJ85s retired from passenger work were converted into air tankers in North America, and governments and air forces kept their VIP and transport examples. In July 2020, 54 aircraft were still in airline and aerial-firefighting service, and the very first 146 built still flies as the British FAAM's atmospheric laboratory, with the intention of keeping it operating until 2040.