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Ingrid’s landing at Le Bourget Airport didn’t go unobserved, far from it. By the time that she followed a guide vehicle to her assigned parking spot in the aircraft display area of the airshow, which was due to open on Sunday, a crowd of at least a hundred persons had gathered to look at her A-24. Shirley Slade, Ingrid’s copilot for this trip, remarked on that as the latter rolled the last few meters to their assigned spot.
‘’Our new plane is certainly going to attract a lot of attention during the next few days. With the way we kept its development discreet, few people outside of the specialized aviation press realized that Hiller was going to produce its first combat jet aircraft ever. Hopefully, this curiosity will translate into more sales. Personally, I believe that the United States Air Force would be stupid not to buy our A-24: it is the perfect plane for the Pacific Theatre.’
‘’I am not sure that our air force will even want to look at my SHARK, Shirley, especially after the way I basically threw that Colonel Forrester out of our plant. By USAF definition, my A-24 is a ‘bare-bones’ combat aircraft, with little of the advanced...and costly, features the Pentagon brass is so fond of. There is also the fact that nearly all the big aircraft manufacturers in the USA have basically blacklisted Hiller for not having conducted an open bid competition for the new aircraft requested by our ASEAN clients.’
‘’Well, those manufacturers would never have been able to keep their design and production costs down the way you did, Ingrid. If designed and produced by, say, Boeing or Lockheed, the A-24 would have ended costing at least twice what Hiller is now asking for the SHARK. There is also this USAF complaint that our aircraft is not fast enough as a fighter-bomber to interest it into buying it.’
