Hawker Siddeley Trident 1978, 117 Tridents had been produced. BEA's successor British Airways withdrew its Tridents by the mid-1980s. Trident services ended in China in the early 1990s. In 1953, as British European Airways (BEA) introduced the world's first turboprop-powered civil airliner – the Vickers Viscount – into passenger service, the operator was already considering what would be required of a potential successor. Following the entry into service of jet airliners in 1952, many airline managers and economists remained sceptical and advocated turboprop airliners as replacements of piston-engined airliners. In 1953, while several manufacturers across the world were investing in pure jet-powered aircraft,
Airliner US, and later designs like the BAC 1-11, Vickers VC10, and Hawker Siddeley Trident although successful would be unable to win a substantial part of it back again. Another committee was formed to consider supersonic designs, STAC, and worked with Bristol to create the Bristol 223 design for a 100-passenger transatlantic airliner. However, this was going to be so expensive to produce that the effort was later merged with similar efforts in France to create the first supersonic airliner—the Concorde. The United States, conversely, gained a huge advantage in design and production in the airline industry in the years leading