[3] The HS.141 design was a jet airliner of all-metal construction with a T-tail and a low-mounted swept wing with a quarter-chord sweepback of 28 degrees.

[4] During the design stage many solutions involving high-lift devices were explored including flaps blown by the "cruise" engines.

The passenger cabin was conventional with five or six seats abreast, luggage and freight was to be loaded in pre-packed pallets and raised up into the lower fuselage using a system similar to the Douglas DC-8.

[6] A conventional take-off and landing flight profile was shown to cover a "noise footprint" of 20 square miles (50 km2) in line with an airport's runway when using a limit of 90 decibels, by using an approach path of six degrees (double the normal angle) and a climb out path of 15 degrees the footprint could be reduced to 3 square miles (8 km2).

By this stage the aircraft would have reached an airspeed of 168 knots (310 km/h) and would be fully supported by its wings alone, the lift engines being shut down and covered by hinged doors.

[5] Despite the work and funds that Hawker Siddeley had expended, the lack of enthusiasm for civil VTOL operations combined with the cancellation of the lift engine’s development doomed the project.