What BEA Really Means

England's troubled airplane-making industry is long since inured to insult, but last week it suffered one of the unkindest blows of all. The country's two biggest airlines, BOAC and BEA, both state-controlled, asked the government for permission to buy Boeing-made U.S. planes.

BOAC wanted to commit $154 million toward the purchase of six Boeing 747s, the jumbo jet (up to 490 passengers) that will go into service in late 1969. The government gave BOAC a go-ahead. Already under fire because its British-made equipment has developed maintenance bugs, BEA asked that it be allowed to buy $224 million worth of Boeing 727s and 737s, both relatively short-range but highly economical jets. BEA got turned down cold.

Minister of Aviation Fred Mulley announced in the House of Commons that instead of its Boeings, BEA must buy made-in-Britain aircraft, with a choice between the Hawker-Siddeley Trident III, the Vickers VC-10 and the BAC-One-Eleven. The equivalent number of British airplanes would cost BEA about $56 million more than the Boeings, but, said Mulley, the government itself would make up the difference. Hearing the news, BEA Chairman Sir Anthony Milward, who holds his job only at the pleasure of the government, bleakly announced that the company's initials should no longer stand for British European Airways, but rather for "British Equipment Again."

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