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At the Farnborough Air Show, 50 miles southwest of London, British flyers put on a dazzling display for 8,000 foreign visitors last week. Fourteen Hawker Hunter jet fighters looped through a whisker-tight formation. Two twin-jet Scimitar fighter-bombers barreled in for a landing, folded their wings just in time to allow a third Scimitar to fly in head-on between them. But all the planes on display and the superb acrobatics could not hide the fact that Britain's aircraft industry is losing altitude fast. Even the empire-loving London Daily Express warned its readers not to be "fooled" by "the Farnborough fac,ade."

End of the Line. A decade ago, Britain had 45 first-class plane-and enginemakers. Now there are 30. Companies are dropping out because the industry's capacity is far higher than the demand for planes. There are so few orders that major planemakers are building for stock--putting together planes and praying that they will be sold one day. A buyer can get delivery of a turboprop Viscount or Britannia in two to three months, v. twelve months for a U.S. Lockheed Electra.

Over the past eight years Hawker Siddeley has built some 2,000 Hunters and profited handsomely; but the Hunter is obsolescent in the age of Mach 2 fighters, and orders for it are rapidly running out.

Vickers, whose turboprop Viscount was the great postwar success story of British civil aviation, has sold more than 400 of them. But it expects to end the Viscount run in 1960. The Viscount's successor, the Vanguard, which was first shown off last week, has a bare 40 orders from British European Airways and Trans-Canada Air Lines, far fewer than needed to break even. Bristol, whose turboprop Britannia was slowed by bugs, has sold only 78.

In the long-range, pure-jet market, Britain washed out. De Havilland, still suffering from its fatal Comet crashes, has sold only 36 commercial Comets, all but ten to British lines. Foreign lines have shown a marked preference for the bigger, faster U.S. jets. As for military sales, Britain has practically abandoned planes, and missile orders are comparatively small, since the U.S. has supplied Britain with many such weapons. English Electric's hot (Mach 2) P.1 Lightning all-weather night fighter, now abuilding, will not only be the Royal Air Force's first truly supersonic fighter, but very likely its last.

Other Fields. To survive, many a planemaker has diversified to other fields. Hawker Siddeley builds cars (the Sapphire). Others make boats, harvesters, computers, plastic products. Those that hope to develop advanced planes are working together. De Havilland, Fairey and Hunting are jointly developing a new medium-range jet, the D.H. 121. English Electric and Vickers are developing a supersonic bomber.

The aircraft industry is under fire from all sides. British editorialists charge that companies are too conservative to press far-out research, too slow to push mergers that would give them greater resources to develop new products. The unions are also up in arms. Last week the British Association of Supervisory Staffs, Executives and Technicians issued a broadside that likened planes shown at Farnborough to "dashing debutantes at the Queen Charlotte Ball: one appearance in lights and white, followed by oblivion." The association blamed the industry's decline on "unparalleled government muddle, management inefficiency, and a seemingly complete disregard for Britain's welfare." One of the union's biggest worries: this major British industry (total employment: 239,800) is laying off workers at the rate of 800 a month.

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