FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1938
1938 - 0178.PDF
64 Commercial Aviation FLIGHT. JANUARY 20, 1938. wasteful competition," which blokes like you and I call throttling the life out of the small independent man. What with one thing and another in general, and Mr. Perkins in particular, I think the day of that sort of op- pression has gone. Only the other day that " Hinden- burg line," the Railway Clearing House, collapsed in sudden panic, and an independent firm, North Eastern Air- ways, walked through the derelict defences unopposed. It is as clear as daylight that the railway monopoly of air lines will be bad, for railways are their main concern, and air lines, properly run by people in competition, will eventually show up the railways in quite a number of ways. Naturally, this will never be done by the railways themselves, who, according to a ribald friend of mine, are looking for a commercial machine to fly slower than their •star expresses. Various companies and their pilots are still very bitter about the unnecessary hazard caused by the new steel lattice tower on top of the hill to the south of the landing area. One must, however, be fair to those responsible for its erection Maybe this is an atavistic return to the eighteenth-century craving to build silly towers, known as "follies," on hill-tops; these seldom serving any purpose at all except when used to guide smugglers, or (perhaps a more parallel case) to hire ships on to the rocks for subse- quent plundering. But more probably it is the result of a Meccano- starved childhood full of frustrated cravings for the long whippy pieces with which you build tall lattice-work towers. Many a grown man, after all, plays trains all day in a suitably upholstered room and watched by a friendly warder. Would not the same man, given endless funds and his freedom, play with real trains up and down our main lines, all unconscious of the danger? " Blimey, how they trust us," remarked someone, seeing the newly erected show-cases in the main hall, which contain full bottles of a well-known brand of gin. But do they? Look at the backs of the bottles and you will see a whole sermon on the fallibility of human nature—the word "dummy." A. VIATOR. Trans-Canadian IT is now expected that .the section of the trans-Canada ahservice between Montreal and Winnipeg will be opened on February I and that the whole section between Montreal and Vancouver will be in operation by the middle of the year. The entire fleet of Lockheed ios and 14s should be delivered before the end of 1938. Milan's Combined Airport 'TOWARDS the end of last year the recently completed civil -*- land-water airport at Linate, Milan, was officially opened. The aerodrome is approximately rectangular in shape with a maximum run of about 2,000 metres, and the marine alighting area adjoins its east side. JThis latter is of an artificial nature and has the same maximum run as that of the airport, but is only 400 metres wide. The new airport has been named after Enrico Forlanini, the Milanese dirigible constructor. General Valle, the Under-Secretary of State for Air, assisted in the opening ceremony. One Up for the Landing Stick A SPARTAN Cruiser on the Northern and Scottish Ren-frew-Campbeltown run was forced to turn back owing to bad weather. There is no radio at Campbeltown and after recrossing the Renfrewshire coast the pilot, Mr. F. P. J. M'Gevor, flying blind, suddenly felt the weight of his trailing aerial bounce on some obstruction. Pulling back his control column he opened up wide and lifted the nose of the machine. A second later, however, he felt it hit the ground. Thirty yards farther on the machine swung to a standstill, minus its undercarriage. He and his operator were unhurt and used the detached compass to find their way to Largs. The accident occurred a few minutes after six o'clock last Friday and it is presumed that the remains lie on the Hill of Stake, which rises to over 1,700ft. and is nearly five miles from Largs. Now what about the landing stick idea? Appar- ently the previously corrected altimeter reading was 2,200ft. at the time of the crash. Internal Co-ordination FOLLOWING the conferences which were held, and the inter-company arrangements which were made, during last summer, Railway Air Services, who now may be said to control the greater part of the internal airline network, recently held a full conference in London with five of their co-operating companies—Jersey Airways, Guernsey Airways, Isle of Man Air Services, Northern and Scottish Airways and Highland Airways. Among the practical results which may be expected are ex- tensive throjgh booking facilities over the length and breadth of the country ; the planning of circular tours by different means of transport; the issue of a comprehensive time-table covering the entire network ; and the co-ordination of luggage, tickets and similar arrangements. It will be remembered that an independent company, North-Eastern Airways, still handles the East Coast traffic with a service between London, Newcastle and Perth in the winter and including Aberdeen in the summer, while other concerns which are doing useful work, such as Western Airways and Allied Airways, still remain outside the "iron ring." Unsurcharged to Malaya HTHE twenty-third of this month is the date on which the -*• unsurcharged carriage of all first-class mails between Great Britain, India and Malay will be started. This marks the second stage in the scheme for the carrying of all such Empire mails by air. The third stage, which will include Australia, should begin in the early summer. The Short Centavrus, which is now on its return survey flight from New Zealand, reached Melbourne on January 13 after a four-hour flight from Sydney. Transport Comparisons A SMALL error, which did not affect the arguments putforward, appeared in the table accompanying last week's remarks on Transport Comparisons made by a reader in reply to Mr. Luard's article of the previous week. The "Capital Cost time/mile load per hour" figure for the D.H. Rapide should have been £zg 10s. od. and not £^g ios. od. For once in a way this was a genuine version oi "printer's error" so beloved of sub-editors. The Pacific Disaster ALMOST immediately following an accident to a North-Westein Airline's Lockheed 14 flying between Seattle and Chicago, the loss of the Pan-American Airways boat Santoan Clipper must have been a serious blow not only to American air transport interests, but also to the American public. Capt. Edwin Musick, who had probably had more experience of long-distance oceanic flying than any other transport pilot in the world, was in command and his life, apart from those of the other six members of the crew, was one hardly to be spared. The machine, a Sikorsky S42B, was on the last stage of its first official flight on the San Francisco to New Zealand service when the accident occurred. The wreckage was sighted by the U.S. aircraft tender Avocet which had been searching in the district of Pago Pago. In his last message Capt. Musick reported an oil leak from one of the four motors and said that he was dumping some of his heavy load of petrol before attempting a landing. Apparently this fuel caught fire as it was pouring out of the valves and the machine was almost completely destroyed ; the fact, among others, that the float- ing wreckage consisted of only the lighter sections of the machine suggests the fire actually took the form of an ex- plosion, and there is little doubt that all the members of the crew were killed instantly. The necessity for dumping is obvious when it is remembered that the Samoan Clipper was carrying sufficient fuel for a flight of more than 3,000 miles, and a landing with such a load on board would obviously have been almost impossible. The accident must have occurred at about 8.30 p.m. G.M.T. on January n. Not very long ago the U.S. Bureau of Air Commerce recog- nised the danger of fire in such circumstances and ordered the sealing of all dump valves in passenger-carrying machines. The Sikorsky, however, carried a special licence for an experi- mental series of flights and fuel had, in fact, been dumped quite satisfactorily during test flights. The possibility of a static discharge cannot be overlooked in examining the possible reasons for disaster. Capt. Edwin Musick had had twenty-four years of flying experience; and had probably surveyed every Pan-American air route, other than those over the North Atlantic, since the company's inception.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
