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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1351.PDF
158 FLIGHT. MAY 4, 1939 COMMERCIAL AVIATION PHANTASMAGORIA : A Mid-Continent Airlines Lockheed Electra is run up preparatory to a night flight from the Company's base at Kansas City. THE WEEK AT CROYDON Tarmac Control A Bird Gets the Bird : Preparations for the September Crisis "A. Viator's" Transport Commentary SOME confusion seems to have arisen over an innocent remark of mine last week to the effect that sooner or later the Croydon airport authorities would have to take over the tarmac control of the aircraft. That is not to say that the present system does not work admirably—for it does, thanks to that fine inter national co-operation which exists at big airports, even though it may be rare elsewhere in the world. But why has it been necessary for the various traffic controllers or supervisors of the companies to form a committee amongst themselves to regulate this matter? Simply and solely because the whole business got into a state of chaos some years ago and the authorities showed no particular capacity for grappling with the problem. Thanks to the co-opera tion I have mentioned, everything runs smoothly, but there is no doubt that here, as at other big international airports, ground traffic control is essentially the job of some neutral authority. Those who look after it at present have no power to deal, for example, with a recalcitrant aeroplane—say a freighter —which draws up sideways, thus occupying the best part of two berths, and which is unloaded at leisure and after wards left lying about until the mechanic in charge has had his "levenses." Nor when he arrives, flavoured with ale and onions, and taxies violently away just a,s the passengers from the air liners are passing behind his tail, is it particularly useful to reason with him for he " don't know nothing about no international co-operation, but anyway no airline bloke ain't got no right to order him about." It comes to this then. The airline people prefer, when possible, to take over a job of this sort, even though the authorities ought to do it and that is their quiet comment on the efficiency of "the Air Ministry. I trust the matter is now clear. Incidentally, looking from my window any morning around 0845 to 0900 hours I see a tarmac crowded with departing machines, which make their dignified and pre cise get-away one after another. Apart from "droving" difficulties—that is, pushing five or six separate herds of passengers belonging to different air companies of different nationalities and booked for different destinations through passport formalities at the same time and seeing them on to their correct machines—there is another factor people forget about these days, and that is the astonishingly and universally high standard of aero-motor efficiency. Look ing from my same window ten years ago, I should have seen at least one departing machine, an Argosy, a Fokker, or a Golden Ray, with ladders all round it and plugs being changed—if nothing worse. There was a whole technique in those days of placating delayed and doubting passengers, whilst worried chief engineers danced around scratching their heads on account of what vou might call '' a technical 'itch." If that sort of thing happened more than once in a blue moon these days, traffic would be in a state of chaos. It is well to count one's blessings sometimes. Ensign Hopes Eddystone, one of the " E " class air liners which have been moribund for some time, is now said to be under going interesting Air Ministry tests with boosted Tigers and constant-speed airscrews. The tests are said to have been satisfactory up to date, but they are being watched with a s«p£r-«agle eye by the Imperial Airways pilots, who do not propose, this time, to be satisfied with anything but the very best. Jacko, the parrot, had a pretty rough ride, not actually (for he came by K.L.M. from Vienna), but metaphorically, when he arrived and found himself classed as an undesir able alien not allowed to stay in this country. Jacko, amongst other accomplishments could say, "How do you do and pleased to meet you '' in English and duly said his piece to the authorities at Croydon when he landed.
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