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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 0571.PDF
MARCH 21ST, 1946 FLIGHT 293 CIVIL AVIATION Mails by Air Using Night Air Services to Speed Up Internal Delivery ON learning that the Postmaster-General plans to speed-up mail 3e-p pp y by the use of night air services theknowledgeable individual is torn be- tween two desires. His first reaction isto praise the Post Office for its foresight and enthusiasm in thus wishing to makeuse of every possible means for the expe- ' dition of mail; his second, as a realist,is to wonder whether, at any rate in this country, the results are likely to be prac-tical within the next ten years. In spite of the old Pony Express"line" that "the mails must go through," it seems to be more importantthat they should arrive with regular re- liability rather than irregularity withgreater dispatch. Knowing our own winter weather and remembering thecomparative shortness of the distances involved, it hardly seems that night airservices are likely, for some time to come, to be sufficiently reliable, intiming and placing, for such important goods as His Majesty's mail. Let us be realistic enough to agreethat, until navigational systems and de- icing methods are very much more thana hundred per cent better than they are to-day, short-distance air services operated at night are not going to be operated toa very strict time-table. The entire situation is altered when we are dealing with longer distances and with a saving in timewhich may be anything up to a month; then, any necessary |; - delay of a few hours or days is not of vital importance.I;-' However, the P.M.G. has merely stated that "as night-flying !: inland services develop " he proposes to make use of them " int suitable cases." "So he has given himself a wide margin and only mentions as '' priorities'' the services to Belfast andDublin—on which, even if there are occasional hold-ups, the saving in overall time will be sufficiently useful to be worthwhile. Of course, if the meteorological people, British Euro- pean Airways and the Post Office can get together to make aquick last-minute decision every day, the letters may at least arrive no later than they would otherwise have done whenbeing sent by surface transport—but one knows how difficult such decisions must always be. Perhaps one day soon the pre-war all-mail-by-air Empirescheme will be restarted. Such a scheme will be infinitely more valuable than any mere internal use of air services fornormal mail delivery. The West land Lj;sander (Concluded from the previous page) buildup in the jet chamber until no carburation was possible. Before discovering the reason for the failure and the needfor using the hot-air control, we used occasionally to make phenomenal and heroic forced landings—only to find, on laterrun-up, that there was nothing whatever the matter. Need- less to say, if we had persisted in our attempts to obtain areturn of power during the whole of each descent, and not just at the start of it, this power would have duly arrived. But,at first, after a few preliminary efforts, we naturally supposed that some form of fuel failure had developed, and believedthat it would be much safer to come straight down on to a suitable field 01 airfield rather than to continue over possiblybarren ground with a doubtful engine installation. Just as biographers and historians are sometimes over-zealousin their criticism of the Victorian days, so I have no doubt been over-critical of a crinolined ancestor of the smoothmodern airship. Take no notice; we all enjoyed flying, and (except when among hostile aircraft) felt absurdly safe in thismiracle of flappery and slottery. FIRST FLIGHT : There could hardly have been anything very seriously wrongwith the prototype Tudor II if Mr. S. A. Thorn, Avro's chief test pilot, and his assistant, Capt. Orrell, could bring themselves to make a low-level fly-past for thebenefit of photographers and others on the ground. Though intended for medium- stage Empire runs, the Tudor II can have a maximum range of 4,100 miles. Atlantic Talks Slow Progress in Dublin : Difficulties Over Communication Systems and Likely Traffic Density "THE North Atlantic Route Service Conference of P.I.C.A.O.,-*- now through its second week in Dublin, is proving a longer meeting than had been originally expected. This islargely due to the fact that no pattern for such a regional organization exists—the Dublin meeting is the first to be heldin each of the ten regions established by P.I.C.A.O.—and much of the work is exploratory, but it will at least have the resultof providing a model for the subsequent talks. Defining the "North Atlantic Region" has not been easy,and the General Committee has advised its sub-committees to give it a liberal—and not strictly geographical—interpreta-tion. This is particularly important to the Meteorological Committee (meeting under Dr. S. Pettersson, professor at OsloMeteorological Institute), which finds that it must have the service of weather stations outside the immediate NorthAtlantic area. This committee is also seeking to devise a series of symbols to convey weather information to pilots of allnationalities in the flight forecast folders, as well as a code for the transmission of supplementary information while the air-craft is in flight. The problem of communications is proving a difficult onebecause the Americans favour radio-telephony and the European countries are more accustomed to the code systemof radio-telegraphy which is necessary to overcome the language difficulty. The strong American delegation has submitted documentson many aspects of the conference's work, including those on the form of the Route Operations Manual, Air Traffic Control,and the Regional Secretariat. The question of the Secretariat is now under special consideration by a group consisting ofU.K., U.S., Canadian, Danish and Spanish delegates. Area control has been causing a great deal of interest, andthe general feeling is that the choice of central control for the region lies between Prestwick and Shannon—with Prestwickas the favoured site. Airports suitable for Atlantic services
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