The ideal of high speed centre-to-centre inter-city air transport remains unrealised with the problems of poor economics and excessive noise dominant and still largely unsolved.

Economics hit particularly hard at VTOL aircraft. Thrust/weight ratios in the order 1·15:1 are necessary with the result that total installed thrust is much larger than is required for the cruise condition and payload and range suffer. It is therefore tempting to compromise and go for a STOL solution and current trends are in this direction.