The cancellation of the Avro Arrow

The Avro Arrow

Avro Canada 

The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow was a interceptor aircraft designed and built by Avro Canada a aerospace design company. The construction of the Avro Arrow began in 1953 and its first test flight took place in on March 25th 1958. The aircraft was a state of the art machine capable of flying up to speeds of Mach 3. Despite such a well designed plane and the opportunity to bring the aviation industry to Canada and put us on the map, it was suddenly cancelled. The cancellation of the Avro Arrow sparked a long, never ending debate as to the reasons why. At the time of the cancellation the reasons to justify such an act were; The mounting cost of the project and the cost to maintain such a project in the long term was too high, another reason was because the United States thought that long range missiles were the way to go and that such use for aircraft like the Avro Arrow will no longer be needed. The last reason was politics, United States who was planned to be the biggest customer of the Avro Arrow would not have wanted to purchase such a plan because it would want to produce its own top gun fighter. The real reasons as to the cancellation are still debated today, and the reason it was not re opened, nobody knows for sure, but  I think it was a missed opportunity.