Sticker Price of a new VC10

Any VC10 related discussions.....
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Fastship
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Sticker Price of a new VC10

Post by Fastship »

Does anyone know what Vickers listed the VC10's at? What was the "sticker" price for a new aircraft, before any discounting.
Jelle Hieminga
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Re: Sticker Price of a new VC10

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

The original order for 35 Standard VC10s for BOAC was for £1.77m per airframe, but Vickers realised in 1960 that the cost of producing them would end up a lot higher. They sold the Super VC10s to BOAC at £2.55m each, having negotiated the price down from the £2.7m per airframe that was initially quoted by Vickers. BOAC later quoted the price for the Super VC10s as being £2.75m each. (figures from the Corbett report and BOAC fleet overview)
Based on a BAC document, the first 30 civil VC10s built cost about £2.6m per airframe to produce (direct costs).
In Grzesik/Dix's 2019 book 'Laker' they state that Freddie ordered four VC10s at a cost of £2.8m, but I strongly suspect that this was the price per airframe, not the total cost of the contract (this is confirmed in the 1980 'Fly me, I'm Freddie' book by Eglin and Ritchie).
Edit: The first EAA contract was for three Super VC10s and spares for a total of £11m, unfortunately I do not know how much of this figure is due to the spares.
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Fastship
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Joined: Sat Jul 10, 2021 11:38 am

Re: Sticker Price of a new VC10

Post by Fastship »

That’s interesting. Given the £/$ exchange rate was ~$2.8 in 1960 the US price would have been ~$7,740 000. I wonder how that number compared to the B707 & DC8 equivalents?

Today of course, all aircraft are price in USD but if we adjust for inflation we find that today’s price for the VC10 is ~£65,000 000 or $87,000 000 at current exchange rates.

Those numbers are around where Airbus pitch their A319 but the nearest equivalent Airbus, the A321XLR is priced around $124,000 000, roughly double the inflation adjusted price of a VC10.

Of course, these are list prices but interesting nonetheless to see price escalation in action in the airliner business.
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Re: Sticker Price of a new VC10

Post by Jelle Hieminga »

I tried to find a number for the 707 and DC-8 prices but the only thing I have right now is the original BOAC order for 15 707s, priced at £44M. That equates to £2.9M per airframe, compared to which the VC10 deal (especially for the Standards) appears to be a very good one, but we have to take into account that spares may have been included in the price. Also, did that include the RR Conways for the 707s?
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