Avro Canada Jetliner :
Introduction :
The Avro Jetliner was a prototype airliner manufactured by Avro Canada in the late 1940’s. The mid range Jetliner was one of the world’s first jet powered airliners, making its maiden flight less than two weeks after the de Havilland Comet (the world’s first flight by a jet powered airliner), in August 1949. The Jetliner was revolutionary. It was close to a decade ahead of the nearest competitor in its class (the French Caravelle) and attracted intense interest after a test flight to New York City in 1950. However, the Jetliner never reached production after funding for the project was withdrawn by the Canadian government in 1951 and the prototype was eventually scraped.
Background History :
The Jetliner was designed to meet a Trans-Canada Air Lines requirement. It was the first jet transport to fly in North America and the second to fly in the world, 13 days after the flight of the de Havilland 106 Comet. Although somewhat short in range, the design’s great potential was never realized. Further development was stopped by the federal government in 1951 in order to force the company to concentrate on the CF-100 jet fighter. Only one Jetliner was built.
Howard Hughes personally tested the Jetliner for his airline, flying it from his private airfield at Culver City in California. Little was known about jet engines in their early days. An airport manager in New York City insisted that the Jetliner park away from the terminal and had pans placed under the “fire-spitting” engines to catch any dangerous drippings. Avro Canada was spawned from Victory Aircraft, a Canadian “shadow factory” that produced British aircraft during the Second World War. After the war, Victory Aircraft was sold to Hawker Siddeley (a British aviation group) and subsequently renamed. Avro Canada invested heavily in research and development from the outset, commencing work on a new jet engine and making preparations for a jet-powered fighter plane and airliner.
In early 1946, Trans-Canada Airlines (later Air Canada) entered a development agreement with Avro, commissioning the company to produce an airliner based on the new Avon jet engine being developed by Rolls-Royce. The aircraft was to seat 30 passengers, operate on existing 4,000 ft runways and cruise at speeds in excess of 400 mph with a range of 1,200 miles. The design specifications were ambitious. Contemporary fighter jets cruised at comparable speeds with a fraction of the weight and the runway restrictions provided just over half the takeoff and landing space used by similar modern airliners.
Technical Specifications :
Wing Span 29.9 m (98 ft 1 in)
Length 25.1 m (82 ft 5 in)
Height 8.1 m (26 ft 5 1/2 in)
Weight, Empty 16,783 kg (37,000 lb)
Weight, Gross 29,484 kg (65,000 lb)
Cruising Speed 676 km/h (420 mph)
Max Speed 805 km/h (500 mph)
Rate of Climb 677 m (2,220 ft) /min
Service Ceiling 12,283 m (40,300 ft)
Range Unknown
Crew Three
Power Plant four Rolls-Royce Derwent 5/17, 1,633 kg (3,600 lb) static thrust, centrifugal flow turbojet engines
The Jetliner was later used as the aerial photo platform for the CF-100 project, and construction work on the partially built second prototype was abandoned. On December 10, 1956 the Jetliner was ordered destroyed, and although it was donated to the National Research Council they had no room for storage and took only the nose section for cockpit layout design. The rest of the Jetliner was cut up on December 13, 1956. The only surviving parts are the nose and cockpit section in the Canadian Aviation Museum in Ottawa.
Avro Canada Jetliner, Avro Canada Jetliner prototype jet airliner.
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Preeti Bagad [BE(CS)]
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