Graham Warwick/ATLANTA
BRITISH AEROSPACE is one of several companies bidding to produce the wing and fuselage of Raytheon's improved Hawker 1000 business jet. BAe's Airbus division builds airframes for the present Hawker 1000 and is negotiating a long-term contract to continue producing Hawker 800 wings and fuselages for assembly by Raytheon in the USA.
Raytheon Aircraft president Roy Norris says that the US company is "...in discussion with BAe Airbus, as well as other vendors, about who will make the wing and fuselage" of the improved Hawker 1000. "It is a competitive bid process and, certainly, BAe Airbus will have an opportunity to win that business," he says.
Norris says that the new aircraft will be "quite a bit beyond the 1000 in terms of performance, capability and size," and will feature a "very advanced new wing". This contradicts earlier reports that Raytheon had scaled back its plans to upgrade the Hawker 1000 (Flight International, 11-17 October). Launch of the new aircraft has yet to be approved by the Raytheon board.
Norris visited BAe Airbus recently to review its progress in recovering from a slowdown in Hawker production caused by shortages of parts and components. He says that Raytheon plans to negotiate a three- to five-year extension to the BAe Airbus contract to supply Hawker 800 wings and fuselages "assuming continuing improvements, adherence to schedule and competitive prices".
Raytheon will move final assembly of the Hawker 800 from the UK to its Wichita, Kansas, plant by mid-1997, but would prefer to keep airframe manufacturing work in the UK, Norris says. All of the remaining Hawker 1000s will be assembled at Raytheon's UK site, which is adjacent to the BAe Airbus Chester plant. The improved Hawker 1000 would be assembled in the USA.
Source: Flight International