Airliner Models

This is a book to read, to leaf through with pleasure, to leave out in full sight of friends and visitors and to come back to. In future, airliner models are likely to be commissioned for the niche uses of marketing and specialised trade shows but the heyday of models like those featured here, often works of art requiring so many hours of labour from true craftsmen, are long past, and Airliner Models is a fitting tribute to them. – Bob Lange * Aerospace magazine *

Anthony J Lawler was born in South Africa in 1939, later moving to Salisbury, Rhodesia. He had already developed a keen interest in aviation, but in 1952 when the world’s first jet airliner, the Comet 1 flew over the city on a proving flight, his interest was really ignited. He wrote to the BOAC office in Johannesburg asking for a model, and to his great joy he was sent his first professionally made airliner model. In the next seven years he regularly visited all the local airline offices and managed to build a small collection of models. Upon graduation in aeronautical engineering from Bristol University, he joined Hawker Siddeley, in the sales department responsible for marketing the Trident airliner. In 1971 he was seconded to Airbus Industrie to assist in sales of the first wide body twin-jet airliner, the A300, and the last twenty years of his career was spent in the USA managing sales campaigns for the Airbus airliners. Since retiring in 2004 he has actively pursued his model collecting and travelling. He is keen to preserve the history of these early models, and has spent eight years assembling the information and photographs to complete this book.