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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 0255.PDF
FEBRUARY I, 1940 95 COMMERCIAL AVIATION MANHATTAN'S SKYLINE : The air traveller to New York's new municipal airport obtains a totally different view from that seen at ground level. NOISE and NUISANCE "A. Viator" on Cotton Wool, the Civil Service, and Air Hostesses SOMEWHAT on the principle that if you have to livein a prison cell, you may as well do the thing properlyand tastefully, and have chromium-plated bars to the windows, one, at least, of the neutral air transport com- panies has gone in for what is described as one-way glass for its cabin windows. When you see the machine on the tarmac you think the windows are ordinary glass, for you can see the curtains inside and so forth. When the stuff first appeared it caused quite a flutter in official circles. Officials had to be led into the cabin, out of the windows of which you can see absolutely nothing, such is the quality of this queer glass, before they would believe that it was opaque. I hear rumours of a forthcoming lecture on noise and nuisance in aircraft, and I can only assume that it will be an historical survey of the matter, ending up with the remark that in these days there is neither noise nor nuisance in a properly constituted air liner. I am not, of course, referring to some of the queer fish of the skies which air- craft manufacturers who manifestly hated their fellow men, including air pilots and passengers, flung on to a dazed and dejected market. I mean the normally good passenger 'plane, built for the job with due regard to the comfort of passengers, such 'planes, in fact, as were to be found on most successful routes just before the war. In these there is neither noise nor nuisance, unless a subdued droning is a noise, and unless it is a nuisance that this soothing murmur is apt to put one off to sleep. Ten years ago railroad kings used to gloat because people had to stuff cotton wool into their ears before flying, and it was no real answer to point out, as I frequently did. that they (the railway companies) ought to issue their passengers with cotton wool to stuff into their eyes on account of the grit, coal, coke and cinders which poured in at the carriage windows. But now things are very different and the air transport companies long ago sold their last remaining stocks of cotton wool to the Santa Claus Christmas Beard Manufac- turing Co., Ltd. There are really very few examples of noise and nuisance in aircraft, unless one refers to the sad case of the gent, who had lunched to the limit and who then sang " Run, Rabbit, Run " in an otherwise quiet cabin whilst beating time methodically with his umbrella upon the bald head of a fellow passenger, thus committing a nuisance and a noise simultaneously. His record Was, however, beaten in the piping times of peace when some- thing like panic arose in a peaceful cabin owing to an injudicious steward serving a Herr Wassefbubbler with a bowl of broth which led to noise, nuisance and intense vibration all at once.
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