BAe Jetstream 1

In the mid-1960s Handley Page refused to be folded into Britain's two large groups, Hawker Siddeley and the British Aircraft Corporation, yet lacked the money to launch a big airliner. Market studies in 1966 pointed to a gap for a small turboprop with twelve to eighteen seats for commuter and executive work, above all in the United States. Against the Beechcraft King Air, the Aero Commander Turbo Commander and the Swearingen Merlin, the company promised more cabin, a better range-payload trade, higher speed and more comfort. Charles Joy's design attracted nearly two hundred orders and options in its first year, and the American Jack Riley ordered twenty aircraft before the drawings were even finished.

The 1965 design seated twelve passengers in six rows with a centre aisle. It was a low-wing, high-tail monoplane with retractable undercarriage; pressurisation, unusual in its class, required a circular fuselage cross-section, and the obsession with drag gave it the long nose that identifies it at a glance. The aisle offered 1.80 m of headroom, but the main spar formed a step in it that was easy to trip over.

Final assembly took place in a new factory at Radlett aerodrome, but much of the structure was subcontracted: Scottish Aviation built complete wings at Prestwick and Northwest Industries of Edmonton, Canada, the tail. The engines were Turbomeca Astazous of about 840 hp (626 kW); sources disagree on the exact sub-type.

The prototype, registered G-ATXH, flew on 18 August 1967 with John Allam in command. The second, G-ATXI, followed on 8 March 1968 and in May 1969 was converted to Jetstream 3M standard; it was broken up at Radlett in December 1970. G-ATXH itself was converted to Series 200 standard in September 1969, withdrawn from use in February 1970, stored at Filton and broken up in October 1972. The first four aircraft had Astazous; the fifth received Garrett TPE331 turboprops to help US sales, the origin of another version.

The engine was the programme's weak point: underpowered for the airframe and surprisingly temperamental for a mature design. Testing eventually moved to Turboméca's own airfield in southern France to speed up engine work and take advantage of better weather.

The first production Jetstream 1, G-AWSE, flew on 6 December 1968; in August 1969 it passed to the International Jetstream Corporation as N1039S and in September was delivered to the Regency Income Corporation. Over the following year thirty-six were delivered. Many aircraft were transferred to the International Jetstream Corporation before delivery in the United States, where they flew for companies such as the Hoover Company, which received its aircraft in June 1969, or the National Steel Corporation, and later for regional airlines such as South Central Air Transport and Apollo Airways. In Europe, Bavaria Fluggesellschaft took delivery of one on 22 October 1969 that crashed at Samedan, Switzerland, on 6 March 1970 after hitting power lines; the British Steel Corporation received another on 28 September 1969 that made a forced landing near Hunstanton the next day. The Cranfield Institute of Technology received aircraft in September 1970, and Air Wasteels registered one in France as F-BTMI in March 1972.

One American pilot remembered the aircraft as great but with particularly troublesome engines: the crew once suffered a double flame-out on final to runway 27R at O'Hare, without damage.

Delays and engine trouble drove development costs above £13 million, against the £3 million forecast. Handley Page launched the Jetstream 2 with a more powerful Astazou, but went bankrupt and the line closed in 1970. A group of investors and Scottish Aviation formed Jetstream Aircraft, moved production to Sywell in Northamptonshire under Bill Bright, and built more Jetstream 1s: ten according to Wikipedia, while the all-aero tally gives five by Jetstream Aircraft and five by Scottish Aviation. Several airframes stored at Sywell and bought by Jetstream Aircraft in August 1971 did not fly until 1973 and 1974, and were delivered converted to RAF Jetstream T Mk 1 trainers.

Many Jetstream 1s changed standard: several were brought up to Series 200 standard, others to T Mk 1 (XX475 in April 1973, XX476 in October 1973), and one, formerly F-BTMI, was bought back by British Aerospace in 1978, converted to a T Mk 2 in July 1981 and sold to the Royal Navy as ZA110 in 1982. In the United States Riley re-engined them with PT6As and Century Aircraft turned them into the TPE331-powered Century III; one of these, flown by Air US, was lost in a mid-air collision near Loveland, Colorado, on 17 April 1981.