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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 0917.PDF
H.*v gTH, 1946 FLIGHT 471 CIVIL AVIATION BACK AGAIN THE British South American Airways Lancastrian, StarLand, commanded by Air Vice-Marshal D. C. ,T. Bennett, arrived back at London Airport last Sunday evening at theconclusion of its gurvey flight to, and across, South America. The purpose of the flight was to investigate possible extensionsto the present B.S.A.A. schedule. ROUND DOZEN B.O.A.C. has ordered twelve Short Solent flying boats,through the ubiquitous Ministry of Supply. These are for use on the Far Eastern service on the run between Singa-pore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. This order is in addition to one placed earlier for Sandringhams, but these will nowbe Sunderland Vs. It is suggested that, by the time the Solents are in service, Tudor Us may be available for othersections of the Empire routes. Meanwhile, the first of the five Constellations has been de-livered to the B.O.A.C. handling party in the United States. ATLANTIC INCREASE.... LAST week we mentioned that the transatlantic air serviceof Trans-Canada Air Lines had been increased to four times weekly. It now appears that T.C.A. aim at improvingthe service still further to five flights each way in the very near future, and that the target for July is one flight a dayin each direction. At present Lancastrians are used on thisservice, but in due course the company will employ the Mer-lin-engined Skymaster for transatlantic flights. It ishoped that the prototype of this machine will fly in Julyand that the aircraft will be in operation before the end of theyear. A week ago Mr. F. M.McGregor, who is operations manager for the CanadianGovernment's transatlantic air service, visited this country.He first joined T.C.A. as its first pilot when the companywas formed in 1937. During his visit he announced that FLYING BOAT BASES "DEPLYING to a question by Mr. Geoffrey Cooper in the-«-*• House of Commons on May 1, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation gave an assurance that thebest expert opinion and all relevant considerations, including technical aspects, had been taken into account before any de-cision was made to use Southampton Water as an interim flying-boat base. Mr. Ivor Thomas added that the suggestionthat the British Air Lines Pilots Association had stated that Southampton Water could never be considered as a suitableseaplane base, and that the scheme was unsafe both for ship- ping and for aircraft, had not been confirmed by the secretaryof that Association. The alleged B.A.L.P.A. statement was originally referred toat question time on April 18 by Sir J. Lucas after the Parlia- mentary Secretary had disclosed that the estimated cost ofproviding temporary docks and other accommodation at Southampton, to enable B.O.A.C. to use it as an interim baseinstead of Poole was £80,000. On that occasion, Mr. Thomas stated that he accepted the fact that Southampton Watercould not be regarded as satisfactory for a permanent marine air base, but, while he was not, prepared to say for how longthe interim base would be used, he indicated that a permanent marine air base could not possibly be developed in less thantwo years. To mention a period of two years in relation to such a project seems to us to be another example of unjusti-fiable optimism. Mr. C. S. Hewitt, who has forsome time been T.C.A.'s station manager at Prestwick, is re-turning to Canada to take up an appointment at Dorval, Montreal, as base manager forAtlantic flights. His post at Prestwick will be taken over by Wing Cdr. John A. Ross, who first joined the company in 1938. NEW SERVICE SAVOIA REDIVIVUS : The first Italian civil air service to be opened, between Milan and Rome, will be operated with Savoia-Marchetti SM-95S. This is an eighteen-passengertransport powered with four Alfa-Romeo 131s. One of these aircraft has been used in this country and was seen (in the distance) at the Farnborough Display last year. P.I.C.A.O. AN interesting little booklet has been published by the Pro-visional International Civil Aviation Organization under the title—which might well have come straight from the ITMAradio programme-^.' What is PICAO ? '' This question must A K.L.M. Skymaster has just completed a transatlantic have been asked by hundreds of people since the organizationproving flight to and from the United States via Prestwick came into being and the booklet is, therefore, all the more bin preparation for the regular service which is to begin onMay 21. Two flights weekly will operate in each direction be- tween Amsterdam and New York, and there will also be a charter flight each week between New York and Curacao. In September, K.L.M. hopes to introduce its South Atlantic ser- vice via Lisbon, Dakar and Natal. AND RE-ROUTING T IBERATORS of B.O.A.C.'s return ferry service which fly-L* daily across the Atlantic are now landing at Shannon (Rineanna on five days each week on the inward journey.From Shannon, the aircraft fly on to Hurn where the service terminates. The outward run, however, does not begin at.Hurn; instead passengers are embarked at Prestwick, as in the past. Nevertheless, on five days each week the outward runalso is routed via Shannon. These changes have been made so that crews will become familiar with the route which will befollowed by the future transatlantic service. The return ferry service will probably continue to operatefor several months more, but its ultimate span of life has not yet been determined. It has now operated without a break forfive and a half years, and, in over 2,000 crossings, has carried 20,000 passengers and 3! million pounds of mail and freight. cam int , ,welcome. It contains a brief history of P.I.C.A.O., and explains the Interim Agreement, Assembly, and Council andtheir functions. At the present time, the first regional conference under theauspices of P.I.C.A.O. to discuss the operation of civil air routes in the European and Mediterranean areas is in progressin Paris. The conference began on April 24 and is expected to go on for about another week. The U.K. is strongly repre-sented by eighteen delegates, sixteen of them from the Min- istry of Civil Aviation, and two from the Meteorological Officeat Air Ministry. In addition these delegates are accompanied by eighteen advisers and a secretariat staff of six. PRESTWICK AGAIN ON Wednesday of last week various pointed and other ques-tions were asked about the position of Prestwick as a trans-Atlantic terminal—and, in particular, in relation to therecent agreement with Eire. Mr. Ivor Thomas explained that this agreement would haveno effect on the planned uses of Prestwick, and said that it had nothing to do with the routing of services via Scotland.While Prestwick was the present United Kingdom Atlantic ter- minal, Rineanna was an intermediate staging post on the
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