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Aviation History
1926
1926 - 0232.PDF
£2 and it is known that as far as our own air line com- pany, Imperial Airways, is concerned, an effort is to be made to develop that type, of which several are on order. In the meantime, a batch of twin-engined machines has just been delivered with which work will, presumably, be carried on until the three- engined machines are ready. This seems somewhat illogical, since theory appears to indicate that the twin-engined machine is rarely able to fly with one of its engines stopped (although types are in ex ist- ence, and flying, which will definitely keep aloft on one engine), in which case the twin-engined machine should be in no better ca~e than the single-engined as regards absence of forced landings. We thus have the case of a company which professes to believe the three-engined machine the correct type, but which yet embarks upon another summer's programme with but one or two machines of that type, and is, appar- ently, content to .purchase new machines which are not of this type. It is certainly at least two years ago that theoretical considerations indicated that the three-engined machine should give immunity from forced landings, and that the twin-engined could not be counted upon to do this. Thus it cannot be claimed that the need for the three-engined machine had not been foreseen. And yet we are still manu- facturing twin-engined types. We have nothing against this type, but if it is agreed that it does not promise to do what is required, surely it is illogical to go on building it. The second desideratum—Safety—can be said to have been attained to a very pronounced degree already, and is to a great extent bound up with that of reliabilitv, the factors making for reliability also largely tending towards safety. There is this differ- ence, however, that whereas machines may be of such a type that they can be landed in almost any field with perfect safety, if such forced landings are frequent, the machines will naturally not be reliable, and the running of a scheduled service will be im- possible. So it is seen that although the two desi- derata have a good deal in common, they are not synonymous. On the other hand, a machine which will never have to make a forced landing, and will always be able to reach its destination, may be regarded as a safe machine also, so that in aiming at reliability one more or less automatically attains safety. The third object to be attained—Economy, is a somewhat vague term, and is very difficult to define as regards commercial aviation. To some extent it is antagonistic to the other two, calling for the inevitable compromise. Yet accepted in its widest sense it should be capable of attainment without undue sacrifice of reliability and safety. Immediately the word economy is mentioned, the mind is apt to jump, where aircraft is concerned, to the subject of paying load per horse-power. While this is undeniably a most important feature, there are. other ways in which the economy of an air service can be improved. By way of an illustration, we may take a purely hypo- thetical case of a service run from a big city in one country to a big city in another country, the machines used being of large capacity and fairly economical as regards paying load per horse-power, if the machines are flying with full load. If, for the purpose of argu- ment, it is assumed that the service is run but once a day, and that the departure is so timed that passengers do not reach their destination at a useful hour, the result will almost certainly be that but 200 APRIL 8, 1926 few will use the air service. The machine will there- fore be flying with only half load, and it's " economy " is thrown away. Let it now be supposed that instead of the very large " economic " machine flying once a day with small load, a smaller type were chosen, and an hourly service between the two cities were run. Then passengers could go to the aerodrome any hour of the day and be certain of not having to wait very long for a machine to leave. There would, in other words, be a departure to suit every need, and many more would use the air line. Even, therefore, if the smaller machines were less " economical " in the matter of paying load per horse-power, they might easily, and probably would, be better than the large one flying with half load, quite apart from the fact that a very much greater number of people would travel by air, and that consequently the charges per passenger mile due to ground organisation would be reduced. It is for reasons such as these that we are not at all sure that the new subsidy basis of " horse power mileage" is likely to lead to greater efficiency, since it would seem to encourage the large machine making few trips rather than the smaller machine making many trips. This very problem enters into the question of the new three-engined machines, and it seems likely that in aiming at machines with 1,100 h.p. or so, we are committing ourselves too much to the horse-power mileage fetish. The three-engined machine is almost universally agreed to be the right type, but it does not follow that we must necessarily concentrate upon the large three engined machine. On the contrary, we believe that quite a useful service could be operated by three-engined machines with a total power of 350-450 h.p. The almost instant success in America of the Fokker three-engined monoplane fitted with engines of 200 h.p. each is an example of the usefulness of the small three-engined type, and we believe that even smaller three-engined machines would be suitable on certain routes. Closely allied with the subject of economy in commercial aviation is the choice of routes, and it is, perhaps, in this direction that there is the greatest scope for improvement, at any rate, as far as British commercial aviation is concerned. If we are really to make a success of our air lines we must get beyond the London-Paris stage. Great Britain is somewhat unfavourably situated from an aviation point of view, and it is an unfortunate fact that we must ask the permission of other nations for nearly the whole of our commercial air work. This is regrettable, but it is a fact which must be faced, and the sooner we can come to an amicable arrangement with Germany, the sooner are we likely to make real progress with British air lines in Europe. Germany is about to launch what may be termed a " spring offensive," and the new German air line company, the Deutsche Lufthansa is planning no less than 39 lines in Germany. It may reasonably be asked what are we going to do. London-Paris does not provide any adequate answer to such a network of lines, and it would appear that, failing an agreement with Germany, our only hope is to- put every effort into the development of Imperial British commercial aviation. The new Cairo-Karachi line is a step in the right direction, but this is not to begin operations this year, and in the meantime others are forging ahead. Even in the Dominions we are being ousted by foreign competition. Unless we bestir ourselves the outlook is far from bright.
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