Birthday for B.E.A. On Wednesday last, August 1, British European Airways celebrated its tenth birthday. Ten years is not such a long time in air transport history and it has often been said that to be first means little; it is keeping ahead that is important. B.E.A. has over the last few years been particularly successful in this respect. The introduction of the Vickers Viscount put the corporation well ahead of its competitors; and although the Viscount is in operation with many airlines, B.E.A. has by far the largest Viscount fleet in Europe. B.E.A. began this year by carrying its 1,000,000th Viscount passenger on January 2. About a quarter of a million passengers were carried in the air by March 31, thus making B.E.A. the biggest airline, from a traffic point of view, outside the U.S.A. Although the report for 1955-56 has not yet been published, provisional figures show that the corporation made a gross profit of £1,100,000 and a net profit of about £500,000. In the ten years of operation B.E.A. has become Europe's largest airline and has carried more than 12,000,000 passengers, produced 635,000,000 capacity ton-miles, flown 1,336,000 hours and earned £113,000,000 revenue. Its total of passenger-miles flown is 3,500,000,000. German Helicopter A recent announcement by the Borgward motor company, Bremen, states that next month they are to start on the development of Germany's first post-war helicopter. Professor Heinrich Focke, whose design work has included several successful helicopters, is to return from Brazil to lead the research and development team. Thundertones An announcement from Republic Aviation headquarters at Farmingdale, N.Y., says that the F-105 has been officially named Thunderchief. External Combustion The time and place of an apparently successful U.S. experiment in the direction of nuclear-powered aircraft were disclosed recently by Mr. Lewis Strauss, chairman of the U.S. atomic energy commission. In evidence just made public, Mr. Strauss told the House of Representatives' appropriations sub-committee: "In January, a turbojet engine was for the first time powered exclusively by heat from an experimental reactor operating on the ground at our testing station in Idaho. More ambitious tests will follow." |
Source: Flight International