Abstract
The Queen’s Award received by Smiths Industries was for its part in the development of a blind automatic landing capability in the Hawker Siddeley Trident aircraft supplied to British European Airways (BEA). Hawker Siddeley and BEA themselves received the Award in 1970 for the same development. It was not until 1974 that the full potential of the innovation was realised when Trident automatic landing was certified for Category 3B landings, that is with a visibility of 50 metres, sufficient only for visual taxying. The long period from the start of the development programme in 1959 was in part a result of necessary technical development but was mainly because of the requirement by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) that for passenger-carrying flights the automatic landing system must have a safety-factor-on-accident rate of better than one in ten million. To demonstrate this, an enormous amount of technical information and experience of using the equipment needed to be compiled. One more factor affecting the implementation of automatic landing was the necessity for suitable ground equipment to be installed in the airports.
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