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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1822.PDF
JUNE 15, 1939 ^o@w 597 Topics 0/ the Day SELLING AIR TRANSPORT —OR NOT " Indicator " Has a Word or Two to Say About Inefficient Airline Flying NOWADAYS, except when the weather at the terminal turns out to be even worse than was expected by the pilot, airline flying is a comfortable and unfrighten- ing procedure on all the international services. Even at the worst one has considerable confidence in the skill and experience of the people in front, and even a semi- blind approach through fog or low cloud is not particularly disturbing—at least, not until one begins to realise, by some sort of instinct, that the pilot is getting worried. The same can hardly be said of our own internal ser vices. Several times during the past few years I have been frightened out of my wits by thoroughly amateur perform ances in bad weather and, judging from- odd remarks dropped by passengers, I do not think that my experiences have been in any way unusual. Curiously enough, some of the best rides that I have ever had have been with small operators in somewhat delapidated aeroplanes flown by pilots of tremendous experience on a particular route. Not long ago I was one of the victims of the most completely inefficient piece of transport flying. Of the other victims one, no doubt in self-defence, slept soundly throughout the proceedings, and the others, because of the particular inefficiencies of the flight plan (if any), were much too ill to notice anything very much. Yet by climbing up to a reasonable height the pilot could have flown his machine right out of all the rough air, and the passengers needed only to have suffered a short few minutes of bumps during the final approach into the aero drome on a series of QDMs. I will ignore the peculiar map-reading manner of the first part of the flight, which was made in visibility of the twenty-mile order under a blue sky; the quite un- ON THE AFRICAN ROUTE: From an Empire boat moored off the coast at Dar-es-Salaam. necessary forced-landing ap proach into an intermediate aerodrome (with really tight whistling " S" turns and everything) ; and even the off-the-ground climbing turn out of this same intermediate airport—and proceed to the bad-weather section of the journey. The clouds came down and the ground went up, but the pilot still kept under the cloud-base until the trees came up more or less to meet the clouds, whereat he climbed just far enough into these clouds to clear the ground. At one moment it was almost possible to see blue sky, and it was only neces sary for him to go up another two or three hundred feet to be out on top, under a blue sky and in smooth air. In stead, he hurried along at what appeared to be about 1,000ft. in a series of con siderable blind-flying over corrections. In due course—presumably after the operator had ob tained a cut from the two per fectly good radio stations in the vicinity, he came down again, flew half in and half out of the clouds in the bumpiest part of the sky for two or three minutes while the countryside dashed by, decided that he was a bit too early on any approximate E.T.A. and climbed up again to clear still more high ground. The door of the control cabin was wide open and the pilot could be watched as he flew half by instruments and half on what he could see directly below him—which wasn't much. Meanwhile he carried on an intermittent and wor ried sort of conversation with his radio operator. After a few minutes he throttled back a little and came down to have another and better look. We flew on home at a safe height of at least 700ft., while the passengers searched numbly for more of those nasty little paper bags. By Contrast A LLOWING for any somewhat inevitable fear-borne •*"*• exaggeration, it was still a very bad show indeed— of a kind which I might put up if I were flying this par ticular type for the first time, had had no blind-flying practice for twelve months, and was a little vague about the route and the positions of the different D/F stations. By contrast, on the same day, I travelled in (A. small machine in which the pilot, using telephony, was his own radio operator. He, being sound and experienced over many years, took his machine, which was full to over flowing, right up to six or seven thousand feet, where the flying was rock steady. In due course, he let us down in a gentle power-approach to break the overcast within nice rumble-approach distance of the aerodrome. There is more than a distinct tendency to treat these internal airline runs as training grounds, yet if ever good, safe, smooth and efficient flying was necessary it is on these self-same internal routes. Not only is the weather, generally speaking, worse than it is on the Continent, but radio facilities are less frequently available, and for years operators have been trying to attract a few passengers without too much success. The combination of an excel lent surface transport system and natural conservatism is quite enough to keep the traffic figures down without the assistance of a few bone-headed pilots. INDICATOR.
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