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Aviation History
1938
1938 - 1725.PDF
JUNE 16, 1938. FLIGHT. 601 THE NEW INSPECTION The Air Registration Board Comes Out Into the Open : A Good Year's Work : Taking Over Civil Airworthiness Responsibilities LAST week the work of the Air Registration Board wasvirtually made public for the first time. For more-^ than a year the Board has been consolidating its position and increasing its responsibilities, and is now doing the greater part of the work for which it was originally formed. Soon after its formation. Flight pub- lished details of its plans, but the Board has probably been quite right in leaving its work, so to speak, in camera as far as the general public is concerned. Not that there has been any secrecy about this work, but simply that no attempt has been made to give it any prominence. At the luncheon which followed the Board's first annual general meeting last Thursday, Sir Maurice Denny, the Chair- man, gave a brief resume of the duties which it has taken over in the fourteen months of its official existence. He ex- plained the similarity between the shipping and the air trans- port industries, but said that the analogy could not be fol- lowed on the financial side. Neither the Board nor the corresponding marine organisations were to be considered as profit-sharing bodies, but the latter were self-supporting, whereas the A.K.B. must necessarily receive financial support from the Air Ministry. As in the case of shipping organisa- tions, the Board's work was limited to that in connection with smaller craft—in their case to machines carrying not more than ten passengers and weighing less than 10,000 lb. Sir Maurice briefly detailed the history of the control of the airworthiness of civil aircraft. Ten years ago the work of civil aircraft registration was delegated to the 7°int Com- mittee of Lloyd's Register and the British Corporation. In 1933 the Gorell Committee recommended that a Board should be established for this purpose and, eventually, to take over the major portion of the Air Ministry's duties in the civil sphere. The Air Registration Board was actually formed early in 1937 and work started ou April 1. In the report which Sir Maurice presented at the general meeting, he explained that the majority of the staff employed hy the Joint Aviation Advisory Committee of the Shipping Registers were taken over on that date, and by July 28 the increase in the survey staff and the establishment of district offices warranted the acceptance of the responsibility involved in the renewal of certificates of airworthiness for all British civil machines. During the first year 2,660 surveys had been carried out and 987 C. of A. recommendations made; of these latter 93 were for machines used on " hire or reward " work. More recently, the duty of recommending the issue of a C. of A. for machines produced after a prototype had been delegated to the Board, and up to April 1 seven of these recommendations had been made. After the first four months of its existence the Board took over the work of examining ground engineers and of recom- mending the issue of their licences ; at the same time it was made responsible for the renewal and extensions of these licences. Since then 275 new licences had been issued and 418 extensions and variations had been recommended. Briefly, therefore, the Board was, before the end of last year, virtually responsible for the entire system of the maintenance of airworthiness. Offices have been established at Glasgow, Liverpool, Hat- field, Heston, Croydon and Southampton, with sub-offices at Hythe and Hamble. At present, permanent weighbridges were not to be found at all aerodromes, and the Board had stationed cars, carrying portable scales, at Glasgow, Liver- pool, Hatfield and Croydon. The Gorell Committee had intended that more reliance should be placed on manufacturing firms, and the Board had framed their regulations so that this intention should be fulfilled. In the pasL all material was accompanied by evidence that it had been manufactured under approved supervision. The Board's intention was to allow lirms to make application for ail approval which enabled them to satisfy the Board that the material used was in accordance with the requirements. Periodical visits of inspection were made to firms concerned with aircraft repairs so that a uniform standard of workman- ship could be maintained. As far as the overseas organisation was concerned, offices had been set up at Alexandria and Singapore for the inspection of British machines, these points being chosen as the most important ones. An agreement was being negotiated with the Director of Civil Aviation in India, and it was expected that similar arrangements would be made both with the Australian Government and with the Canadian Ministry of Transport. The latter, it was hoped, would act on behalf of the Board in the case of the machines used by Imperial Airways on the Bermuda sendee. Arrangements had been made with the American Department of Commerce for a reciprocal airworthi- ness renewal svstem. Coming of Age NEARLY twenty-one years ago Lt. Col. R. Smith-Barry andhis staff started to evolve the first definite sequence of ub initio instruction at Gosport. This sequence has matured into the present C.F.S. method. On Sunday, July 10, there will be a reunion of old " Gos- portians" at Brooklands Aerodrome. All those who were instructors at, or who passed through, the School of Special Flying, Gosport, in 1917-18, are asked to get in touch at Brooklands with Capt. H. Duncan Davis, himself once a Gosport: instructor. It is hoped that Lt. Col. Smith-Barry will be able to be present at this reunion. The Luton Club ALTHOUGH the recently formed Luton Aero Club does notofficially begin its operations until the opening of Luton's municipal airport on July 16, flying has already started with the two available Tiger Moths, and another Tiger Moth is to be delivered in due course. The chief instructor is Mr. E. W. Bonar, M.B.E., and the ground engineer is Mr. A. Streeter. In our Light Aircraft Number the club's composition was explained, but it might be mentioned again that the sponsors are Personal Airways of Croydon—in other words, Capt. W. Ledlie. Quite accidentally, the club building is particularly well arranged for the purpose. This was originally a farm building on the airport site and is long and narrow, so that the clubrooms lead conveniently into one another, with a view of the aerodrome from each one. Anyone who saw this build- ing in its somewhat bedraggled state several months ago will be surprised at the way in which it has been successfully modified for the purpose. In due course three tennis courts are to be laid out on waste ground beside it. The airport 'tself, incidentally, is managed by Mr. II. T. Rushton, who was previously in charge of Liverpool's airport at Speke. Transatlantic IT has been announced in Washington that Pan-AmericanAirways will be ready to start an Atlantic air service on a semi-commercial basis in September. Presumably by that time they will have taken delivery of their new Boeing boats, and will, temporarily, be in a rather better position than our- selves to carry mail, or even passengers, across the North Atlantic. Remembering the difficulties of forecast in such circumstances—we shall i-ee. It seems that the service will, for the moment, be operated via the Azores and Portugal, though this is not a route which can be ueed with regularity, owing to the unsuitability of the Azores as an all-the-year-round base. The eight specially stressed 53.000 lb. Short boats will' probably be ready just as soon as the rather larger Boeing boats. Meanwhile three large Short boats are also on order. Incidentally, it appears that the German Air Ministry has again asked for permission to use the United States as a ter- minus on eighteen return flights to be made during this summer. New Australian Ferry Service A SEAPLANE service between Sydney and Newcastle is tobe started in the autumn and will be run on a half-hourly basis. The machines to be used will be Short Scion Seniors. Behind the scheme is the Australian film magnate, Stutirt F. Doyle, who discussed the plans with Shorts at Rochester several months ago. The directors include Mr. Doyle, Sir Alan Cobham and three Newcastle (N.S.W.) business men. The choice of seaplanes for the service is explained by the facts that between Newcastle and Sydney stretches a coast of quiet waterways, and that seaplanes can land passengers right in the -two cities, both of whose business centres are on the harbours. Each flight will take twenty minutes.
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