Vanguards for T.C.A.

Fast-growing Trans-Canada Air Lines, the world's eighth largest airline in passenger-miles flown, made its biggest splash last week by announcing that it had ordered 20 Vanguard turboprop airliners from Britain's Vickers-Armstrongs, Ltd. Cost: $67.1 million--the largest single dollar order placed in Britain since war's end.

The Vanguard, which is still only a set of plans on the drawing board plus a wooden mockup, is a big, versatile, medium-range (up to 3,000 miles) airliner that will cruise at 420 m.p.h. Designed with a two-level, "double-bubble" fuselage, the Vanguard will be able to carry two tons of freight and mail on the lower deck and as many as 122 passengers on the top deck. T.C.A. will take delivery on its Vanguards in the fall and winter of 1960-61, retire or sell all its piston-engine planes, wind up with an airfleet composed entirely of jet-powered Viscounts, Vanguards and DC-8s.

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