On June 14, 1947, the Avro design team met their new Project Designer. Frost had arrived at Malton with his wife at an extremely precarious point in the design of the new XC-100. After eighteen months of development, the new jet fighter had entered the mock-up stage. Years later, Frost admitted that he was surprised by the crude wooden mock-up that looked so different from the beautiful Swallow. He made a decision to alter the aircraft design which immediately brought him into conflict with Chief Aerodynamacist, Jim Chamberlin.

Basically "cleaning up" the fuselage, Frost set out to change the design subtly. Even though he wanted to use a swept-wing configuration, (the swept-wing CF-103 was proposed by Frost in December 1950 as a transonic follow-up to the CF-100), the prototype now called the CF-100 proceeded to prototype stage in the same basic configuration of straight-winged, twin-engined form. Although the CF-100 prototype was now much more a sleek shape, Frost still considered the design awkward. "It was a clumsy thing. All brute force." he remarked (The Daily News, 1979). (The CF-103 proceeded to mock-up stage but was cancelled after Zurakowski dived the CF-100 Mk. 4 prototype to supersonic speeds.)

While Frost was in England to confer with members of the Hawker Siddeley Group, Chamberlin made another alteration to the design after wind tunnel tests had shown the centre of lift was too far forward. With approval from the Chief Engineer, Edgar Atkin, Chamberlin moved the engines back but had to alter the wing spar to accommodate the engines. A nearly disastrous decision had been made as the spar was now weakened and led to a flexible structure where the stress was heavy. In other words, the aircraft had a "soft" centre section in the wing spar.

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