BAe Jetstream Jetstream 1

In the mid-1960s Handley Page refused to be folded into Britain's two large aviation groups, yet lacked the money to launch a big airliner. Its answer was a small, fast machine for the American commuter market, a twelve-to-eighteen-seat gap where it believed it could offer more cabin, a better range-payload trade, higher speed and more comfort than the Beechcraft King Air, the Turbo Commander or the Swearingen Merlin. Pressurisation, unusual in that class, demanded a circular fuselage cross-section; the obsession with drag gave the aeroplane its long nose, the feature that identifies it at a glance. The 1965 design seated twelve in six rows with a centre aisle, although the main spar left an awkward step in that aisle.

The prototype flew on 18 August 1967 with Astazou XVI engines of some eight hundred and forty horsepower. The engine became the programme's weak point: short of power for the airframe's weight and surprisingly temperamental for a mature, widely used design. Testing eventually moved to Turboméca's own airfield in southern France to shorten turnaround on engine work and take advantage of better weather.

Commercial interest was immediate — an order for twenty aircraft arrived before the drawings were finished. The first production machine flew on 6 December 1968 and thirty-six were delivered over the following year. Delays and engine trouble drove development costs far beyond the original estimate, Handley Page went bankrupt and the line closed in 1970. A group of investors together with Scottish Aviation rescued the design under the Jetstream Aircraft name and built a further ten Jetstream 1s at Sywell, in Northamptonshire.