Britains propeller industry takes off again

Robert Lea, Industrial Editor & ,}

The Spitfire and the Hurricane would not have flown but them, the Second World War would have sounded really opposite but their particular rumble overhead, but feat and assent noted the commencement of the finish of the golden age of the aircraft propeller.

Until now, maybe since in a dilemma of an airport in Gloucestershire, a really British industry is creation a comeback. Moreover, the rebirth is being driven not by nostalgia but by 21st-century pragmatism.

The rising cost of aviation fuel, the environmental direct for cleaner, quieter aircraft and the disaster of the Airbus A400M troops conduit to get off the belligerent have constructed to holder up commercial operation at GEs Dowty Propellers, the ultimate incarnation of Rotol, the good Rolls-Royce/Bristol Engines partnership whose propeller blades helped to win the Battle of Britain.

With 270 workers at Gloucestershire Airport, Dowty Propellers is operative at full tilt. Passengers of FlyBe, the British informal airline, are expected to house a twin-engine turboprop for their bound over to the Continent. The re-emergence of such an aircraft, built by Bombardier, of Canada, for that Dowty provides the propellers, has revitalised seductiveness in turbine-driven propellers for short-haul trips. Bombardier is aiming to set up about 50 of the 70-seat Dash 8 Q400s this year and, at 6 blades per turboprop, that equates to Dowty will be construction about 600 blades for Bombardier.

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Meanwhile, the alternative big patron Lockheed Martin, the builder of that old warhorse of troops travel the Hercules C-130J, is aiming to furnish twenty-six aircraft in 2010, stuffing the opening left by the non-appearance of the long-delayed Airbus A440M. At 6 blades per engine, 4 engines per Hercules, thats an additional 600-plus blades.

As oil prices began to climb during the last decade, the fundamental effciency value of the turboprop came behind in to concentration and behind in to fashion, pronounced Oliver Towers, the man promoted to lead Dowty Propellers after Smiths Aerospace, of that it shaped a part, was sole to GE in 2007 for $4.8 billion. It is twenty per cent some-more fit [than a turbofan jet engine] at cruising speed and, over the length of the sort of short flights for that turboprops are made, the saving can be as most as 50 per cent. The longer the flight, the less of the efficency benefit as the turbo column is not as fast, typically 350 knots opposite 450 knots, as a Boeing 737 ... And the turboprop marketplace is developing. Bombardier are seeking at a 90-seater. The Indians at the NAL and the Chinese of XAC are seeking at building turboprop aircraft. These are the sort of programmes we wish to be on.