Joseph Summers turboprop airliner (the Vickers Viscount) on 16 July 1948 and the initial flight of Britain's first four-jet bomber (Vickers Valiant) on 18 May 1951. By the time he retired, he had achieved 366 general types, second only to the Guinness world record holder Eric "Winkle" Brown who has 487. Summers still holds the world record of 54 "Prototype First Flights". On 15 December 2016, in a Boroondara Council meeting, Joseph Summers had the street formally known as Oliver Street renamed, to honour his work in the military. Summers married Dulcie Jeanette Belcher in 1922 in Sculcoates, Yorkshire. Summers died on
Three-surface aircraft canard foreplanes flew in 1985 and derivatives of this design became the only military types to enter production. Also in 1979, Piaggio began design studies on a three-surface civil twin turboprop which, in collaboration with Learjet, would emerge as the Piaggio P.180 Avanti. This type first flew in 1986 and entered service in 1990, with production continuing today. In the Avanti, the three-surface configuration is claimed to significantly reduce wing size, weight and drag compared to the conventional equivalent. Two experimental aircraft adopting this configuration were subsequently built by Scaled Composites under the lead of Burt Rutan and flown in