London Banter - View Single Post

Bruce[_2_]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:11:52 GMT, (Neil
Williams) wrote:

On Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:44:30 +0100, "
wrote:

I've also been on flyBE. I don't think that I'll be doing that anytime
again soon.

The ex-BA "Barbie jets" are very nice, but operationally they're
atrocious, and they aren't even all that cheap.

The BAe 146 was selling well and making money, until BAE Systems
decided they could make even more money from their Hatfield site by
selling it for property development. So they closed down the factory
with several thousand highly skilled, highly paid jobs being lost. The
smaller number of low skilled, low paid jobs that resulted from the
development of the airport site have done nothing to help Hatfield
recover from what was a devastating blow.

The updated model, the Avro RJ, was assembled at Woodford from
components made at Avro, Chadderton. It had different engines and was
much more reliable. But that finally fell victim to a BAE Systems
corporate decision to abandon civil airliner production (and car
manufacture) in favour of more profitable weapons systems.

To add insult to injury, Wikipedia reports that BAE Systems have set
up a project to convert used BAe 146 and Avro RJ airframes for
military use.

To add further insult, BAE Systems recently announced the closure of
the Woodford factory.