The aim of this paper is to show how design improvements may lead to a reduction in direct operating cost, pence per passenger mile. In all the comparisons made it is assumed that equal standards of equipment, accommodation, powerplant efficiency, and so forth, apply and that equal skill and standards apply in manufacturing; differences therefore are due to design features. The paper is in two main sections:

(1) A Satellite's eye-view of the whole design problem of the cheap short-range transport aeroplane.

(2) A more detailed description of two specific examples which illustrate the conclusions drawn from the general survey.

The first part is historically fiction but technically fact; the second part (despite the temptation to interchange the above two nouns and adjectives) is, I claim, fact both historically and technically.

I have departed from the historical sequence of events for the first part because we have now realised that it is possible to present in a comprehensive general argument the rather confused mass of data, ideas, techniques, inspirations and false trails that, in the course of time, led us to an enthusiasm for the all-wing Aerobus.