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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 0456.PDF
i8o FLIGHT. FEBRUARY 18, 1937. OMMERCIAL /-\/IATION AIRLINES =_=__^ AIRPORTS- THE WEEK AT CROYDON Rapid Replacement : Education Humidity and Otherwise for Comfort Aerial Creches : Reorganisation SURPRISE has been registered in some quarters that an engine, on the Douglas D.C.2 which recently landed at Eastchurch, could be changed in a few hours. Probably the owners of the aeroplane even felt slightly ashamed of the time taken, for at Swissair and K.L.M. headquarters the proper tackle enables the whole operation to be performed in about an hour without any feverish hustle. I'm told that a Douglas motor has been changed in twenty-five minutes over in the States! Why not? After all, an aero engine in these days should go in almost like an electric light bulb. According to local gossip, an arrangement has been reached whereby Squadron Leaders may travel to Paris and back by Imperial Airways with that rare and cherished document—a cockpit pass. There is a lot to be learned from a body of men who must fly if weather permits—and whom most weather actually does permit. Old hands on the air routes develop instincts about weather conditions and their forecasts are quite as well worth listening to as those from an official source. Then, again, they have a surprising way of knowing exactly where they are, even though flying above or in clouds. All this may sound very "wizard" until you realise, for example, that Capt. Rogers, of Imperial's, has just completed n,ooo solid fly ing hours, and that some of the other seniors run him fairly close. Except for a hundred hours or so his flying has all been done on cross-Channel routes, for even during his military service he was a ferry pilot. Gatwick is still, they say, a trifle humid, but I don't altogether believe the story of the man with the wheel barrow—an agriculturist, no doubt—who, while taking the chance to do a spot of water-lily planting, suddenly sank, and was only retrieved with difficulty. If his wheel barrow remained below full fathom five, the correct course would have been to moor a buoy over it, topped by an obstruction flag. Striking Oil ? At Croydon there would appear to be a drought, for people have dug some four enormously deep wells and erected pumps. They are having no end of fun lowering buckets on ropes or swarming up and down ladders, and one party has built a tasteful rockery round the well mouth. I remember that some foreign professor of " dowsing " once flew in here with a divining rod and reported mineral oils somewhere under Purley Way or thereabouts. Perhaps these are oil wells, though, from the stuff they are pump ing up, I should suspect them of being ink-wells. Some people say they are " sumps " which have got bunged up, but that's not so romantic. One day last week a new phase in air-line activity was inaugurated—the Aerial Creche, into which you just drop little Willy or Audrey and wander off to enjoy yourself. A Mr. Calvetti arrived at the airport with a year-old child, handed it to the stewardess of the K.L.M. io.o a.m. machine, and remarked that the child's grandparents would meet the machine the other end. The advantage of a lady attendant is abundantly clear in such cases. February 13 was, despite the date, a fairly good day for air services, but Monday, February i5l was not so good— apart from the fact that Mondays never are, anyway. The majority of places on the Continent shut down with a bang early on, and Air France, British Airways, and two K.L.M. machines had to return to Croydon. Several of these flew for an hour or so before returning, and one of the two Dutchmen was over Holland before he gave it up. The point is that machines usually have enough fuel for the return journey, and I wonder if the public is sufficiently grateful for this sacrifice of possible revenue. Swissair had no difficulty, the weather in Switzerland being good. Several Imperial Airways traffic clerks have silently stolen away, and it transpires that they have been selected for a course of instruction for appointments as ships' clerks on board the Empire flying boats. By the way, the air port lost-property office now lacks that row of solar topees, African idols, empty "square-face" bottles, souvenir slabs of Pyramid, and the rest of the flotsam and jetsam of Empire travel which brought a ray of sunshine and romance. I suppose a similar museum will have come into being at Southampton. The Practical Angle People here are looking forward with curiosity to the R.I.B.A. airport exhibition to be opened to-morrow. Air port people, especially those who do the practical, everyday work—handling passengers and freight, despatching aero planes with punctuality, working with H.M. Customs, and so forth, as well as those responsible for housing aeroplanes, organising workshops and stores—have pretty definite ideas on all these subjects. I wonder how many ol the architects concerned will have studied these points from a practical viewpoint. I believe the time is ripe, anyway, for a covered "station platform,' where aeroplanes, either on slow-moving platforms or tractor-towed, arrive and depart in a more civilised way than at present, when passengers have to embark and dis embark in torrents of rain and sleet and battered by gales, both natural and artificial. Pilots do not need to try out all their motors on the actual tarmac, and if "tugs" were employed they could move majestically to some other spot before doing so. People would then, incidentally, never be blown violently backwards through the main door way, down a corridor with several right-angled turns, via a couple of pairs of swing-doors, and into the Main Hall. [Gatwick has attacked the airscrew-gale problem with its covered gangways emerging from the building. ED.J Another obvious necessity is the provision of electrically propelled luggage trucks instead of the present motley col lection, some of which have wheels which scream like trapped rats or like young women in the swingboats. FF y b A. VIATOR. November It Is ACCORDING to messages from Washington, Pan-American Airways will be ready by next November to collaborai with the Imperial Airways combine company in a regu North Atlantic mail service. The American Post Omce na asked for £240,000 to subsidise the service during the'J?3*- ? this has now been reduced to £180,000 since the lull tw ^ weekly service could not be expected to start at once, will probably use the new Boeing boat.
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