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Aviation History
1948
1948 - 0362.PDF
302 FLIGHT MARCH I8TH, 1943 CASUAL COMMENTARY Can We Afford Air Transport ? : Long-period Over-optimism the Cause of Present Set-backs : A More Realistic Attitude Needed WHEN he reads, week by week, of airline and aircrattmanufacturers' losses, the mythical man-in-the-street can be forgiven for wondering what is the matter with aviation. For wondering, in fact, whether the world can afford the luxury of this swift, comfortable, and sometimes lethal form of transport; whether something can have gone wrong with the trend of aircraft design; or whether the manufacturers and operators are offering too much for too little in the way of prices and fares. Altogether excessive fuss was, of course, made about the losses incurred by our Corporations. Too much top hamper they may have, and inefficient, like all large organizations, they may be—but they were expected to lose money, if not quite as much as all that. The real shocks are not to be obtained from a study of our own balance-sheets, but from a glance at American aviation news items. Here we have a country in which there is ample spending power, a fully developed air- line network over which the most perfectly balanced stage-lengths and schedules can be planned, and an industry capable of producing any kind of aircraft to suit domestic and world-wide needs. Yet one learns that the airline companies are " in the red," and that some manufacturers are almost proudly claiming (no doubt for political reasons) financial losses of astronomical proportions which are expected in spite of orders running into values of a thousand million dollars. Obviously, there is something very wrong with the entire set-up. Part of the trouble, of course, is that wages and costs in general have gone up to such an extent that the originally quoted prices for aircraft were much too low, while the manu- facturers have not dared to raise these to realistic levels for fear of losing their orders—and, in particular, their overseas orders from a pauper outside world. Nevertheless, some orders have, inevitably, been lost, and the back logs do not now reach the numbers on which production plans and prices were originally based. Then, too, airline requirements were planned on traffic figures for the war years and those imme- diately following, during which the speed of delivery of key personnel and goods was vitally important. For a dozen reasons—not excluding the fear of sudden death—these traffic figures have dropped very considerably. Optimistic Enthusiasm But the real cause behind it all has been the over-optimism rampant in world aviation during almost the whole of the past thirty years. Air transport costs are not, and never will be, comparable with those of surface vehicles, yet year by year we have fooled ourselves with this talk of " air travel for the masses" and "getting the fares down to railway level." There was a time when, using simple aircraft for certain specialized short-distance services, we came near ir paying our way. But even that balance of accounts was largely illusory, since insufficient allowances were made foi fleet replacements and, more important still, a very large proportion of the cost of ground services was being carried, as at present, by the taxpayer. No, when any enthusiastic person says, " . . . but the Hocus Pocus Airline Corporation certainly paid its way in 1932 . . " just ask for the balance-sheet and give it a most careful study. You will find lots of items missing, and it will be obvious, in any case, that the final credit balance of three and elevenpence three farthings would hardly pay for a new hat for the company's coach driver. We must come to our senses over this flying business— and especially now that aircraft costs are so high. Ail travel must be taken for what it is—a useful though extrava- gant means of transport—and the passenger must pay an By. — ROBERT CARLING economic fare for the privilege of being kept airborne, as well as for the value of speed as such. And any aero- dynamicist will give you the cost, in power and fuel, of the first privilege. If traffic cannot be found at economically sound fares, then timetables must be scrapped and all air journeys must h§: planned on a charter basis. It should be easy enougl Jp ensure a profit if only capacity-loaded aircraft are flown over definite non-stop distances. Of course, I know that aircraft should pay, even on an air- line. You have only to do a few sums to prove it. For example, a certain forty-seater airliner might be shown indisputably to cost only £100,000 in all direct operating charges during a flying time of 2,000 hours. If, in this period, it is flying with an average of only 30 seats of the 40 filled by passengers, then, at modern cruis- ing speeds and the present fare-rate, the total traffic receipts will be about £280,000. Which means that the operator is netting £180,000 in every year, from which, after headquarters, traffic, publicity, landing charges and all in- direct expenses have been deducted, there should still be quite enough to cover the purchase of a new aircraft after ten such years. But the sad thing is that it doesn't appear to be true. Either the seats are not filled, or there are some astonishingly high costs for which no allowances are usually made by the optimistic promoter. We.have surely been at it long enough now to feel certain that airline losses cannot always have been caused by bad luck or indifferent aircraft—that they must, in fact, have been caused by the high cost of airline operation as such. So let us accept it and stop all this wishful thinking. As someone recently wrote, " A realist is not the antonym of an idealist. A man may have high ideals yet be able to con- template resolutely the results which any action is likely to bring in its train." Let us retain our belief in the value of air transport, as such, while facing the uncomfortable facts with realism. World-wide Proving Flights Which brings us to another matter over which realistic thinking is needed. Because of our own particular geographical position and climate, new British civil aircrT have not previously been given a sufficiently thorough t before being shipped or flown to operators in less temperate parts of the world. Troubles which would not be met during the most intensive testing in our own climate have appeared as soon as the aircraft have been put into service elsewhere. The industry is fully aware of this, but it is diffi- cult to see how the problem can be satisfactorily solved. It is obvious that, unless the cost is spread over a very large number of production aircraft, a manufacturer cannot afford to organize and carry out an intensive long-period series of proving flights all over the world. Such a series of flights will, if they are to be properly done, be quite expensive. The obvious thing, perhaps, would be to hand over such development work to the R.A.F., but the manufacturer might not like thus to lose sight of this prototype, and, without the necessary personal interest, it would be too much to expect the R.A.F. to put into such proving flights all the effort that is necessary. One can well imagine the apoplectic anger of a really keen factory experimental team on finding that their prototype, far from being intensively flown, is sitting somewhere quietly on the ground. For any firm with a production expectation of tens rather than of hundreds, the position is especially difficult. Air- craft in this category are likely to be large and expensive to operate, yet the type will probably be all the more in need
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