FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1951
1951 - 0654.PDF
408 FLIGHT, 6 April 1951 CIVIL AVIATION ... services rendered to them. He believed I.A.L. could have become atruly international company. He went on to list as "disappointments" certain aspects of the develop-ment of London Airport, the Brabazon, the handing-over of the Princess flying-boats to Transport Command, and the de Havilland Comet. Ofthe last-named he said he was not quite so optimistic as another member who suggested that it was the sort of great white hope of our civilaviation. He thought that the Comet had been grabbed at by B.O.A.C. as a drowning man grasps a straw. He was not yet convinced that a jetaircraft could be operated sufficiently economically over sufficiently long staies to ensure the operating company making a profit from its operation. Mr. Cooper next referred to the improvements that had been madein the Corporations' operations in the last few years. It had been said that since 1938 the British Corporations had increased their passengermileage 11 times, which sounded a formidable increase in their activities, but as an indication that other countries were forging aheadmore rapidly it was worth noting the results which were being achieved in some of those other countries. Norway, for example—starting,perhaps, from a point lower down the scale than we were at in 1938— had increased its total 56 times in a similar period, Canada 41 times,Ireland 34, India 25, Australia 19, the U.S.A. 16, South Africa 15, France 13 and New Zealand 12. Then came the United Kingdom,tenth down the list, with n times. Belgium, Denmark and Switzerland had each increased 10 times. Mr. Cooper then referred to the reports of the two Corporations, totheir policies and management. He contrasted B.E.A. and B.O.A.C., to the advantage of the former. There were two ways, he said, in whichpublic corporations could operate; the first was by the policy-board of governors, rather similar to that of B.O.A.C. Under that there was thechief executive with his board of administrative and technical officers. He believed that in the case of B.O.A.C., and certainly some of the otherCorporations, far too much was referred to the centre, which prevented immediate decisions and imaginative work from being done by thoselower down in the organization. These boards had tended in the past to be made up of what might be termed "safe" men, who were notlikely to cause too much trouble to the officials in the M.C.A. Some- times they were ex-Civil Service or ex-R.A.F. men who were rather tooold to grasp the new problems of a technical and commercial nature thrown up by civil aviation. Corporation Efficiency LORD MALCOLM DOUGLAS-HAMILTON took up the point of runningthe Corporations as efficiently as possible and the necessity of cutting out dead wood. He had, he said, some rather interesting comparisonsto quote. The American airlines considered that an annual utilization of their aircraft of about 3,000 hours was necessary. He found that inB.E.A. the annual utilization was only 1,320 hours. That was one element that could quite clearly be improved. Looking at the figures ofstaff—in comparison with those of Trans-Canada Air Lines, for example—B.E.A., flying rather less than twice the mileage of T.C.A.(who fly 16,364,000 miles to B.E.A.'s 30 million miles), had rather more than four times the staff of T.C.A. Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton recalled that before the war he hadnot much liked the monopoly which Imperial Airways had represented— it had showed a reluctance to advance for one reason or another. Butin those days it was still possible to run an airline without incurring the penalty of a £5,000 fine or two years in prison. Now we had a monopolywhich was firmer than ever. Spokesmen of the Government said that they wanted to encourageand even to help our charter services, but in reality the Minister seemed to be more intent on making the Corporations unassailable and to behelping them virtually to wreck their potential rivals. In January, 1949, the Minister issued a directive which did a lot totorpedo the future of independent operators. There were about six provisions in this directive which really were wrecking provisions.These he quoted, and in answer to a question from Mr. Beswick men- tioned one particular example: that fares should not be less than thosecharged by the Corporations. Mr. Beswick said that before that directive was issued it was not possible for the private operators to engage inscheduled operations at all. Continuing, Lord Douglas-Hamilton said that the Minister hadindicated that he was a watchdog for the taxpayer. He [Lord Douglas- Hamilton] would quote an example of what happened when the NigerianGovernment wanted a service between this country and the colony. A charter company had been approached which had suitable aircraft torun a service. There was no expense involved to the taxpayer on either side. However, this was not allowed, and one of the Corporations (hethought it was B.O.A.C.) put on aircraft obviously unsuitable. It had been alleged that each flight had cost the taxpayer £10,000. Lord Douglas-Hamilton said he would like to know if B.E.A. andB.O.A.C. were serious about not wanting to enter the charter trade. They had representatives now at the Baltic Exchange and, through thatexchange, the independent charter companies had built up a considerable business. In another place Lord Douglas of Kirtleside had indicatedthat these agents were there only to obtain freights for the Corporations. He should not like to contradict him, but if he examined the amount ofbusiness that these agents had got for the Corporations, he might have given a different answer. Above all, the Corporations must not beconsidered sacrosanct. They must not be protected from competition. Returning to the subject of Prestwick, Lord Douglas-Hamilton firstcorrected earlier speakers by saying that this was never a small private flying club. From the beginning it was an airfield which was trainingaircrew for the R.A.F. The question of handing it back to private enterprise never arose, because at the end of the war the then owners ofPrestwick offered it to a public corporation in Scotland. The impression the Government had given was that they just decided that they wouldtake over Prestwick. They had not done that even yet, but they had merely decided to take it over—with scant recognition of the pioneerservices rendered there. On the subject of developing aviation in Scotland, he said that whatwas needed was the provision of airlines to areas on the west coast. There were still quite a lot of people who could virtually only be reachedby one of three methods: by helicopter, by flying-boat or by means of the tremendous cost of making new airstrips. The obvious way wouldbe to develop flying-boat services. Ullapool to Skye; Tobermory to Oban; and along the Caledonian Canal were services suggested.Furthermore a little imagination could be used to develop an air mail service on the west coast in which helicopters would be very useful. After a few words championing the cause of private pilots and privateflying, the discussion once more turned to charter flying, and then to the possibilities of Fido. MR. GEOFFREY LLOYD contributed a comprehensive description of thedevelopment and potentialities of this aid. Some 2,500 R.A.F. aircraft had landed with the help of Fido during the war. Mr. Lloyd said thatit was easy to build up a great case against Fido for civil use on the grounds of extravagance, and Lord Nathan had taken the figure up to£3,650 an hour. In order to correct the high estimates which had come from Government spokesmen in the past, he quoted an estimate from ascientist engaged in developing this apparatus during the war. He admitted that this went rather to the other extreme. Taking two minutesfor landing on a i,5a>-yard runway and using one-third of a gallon per minute, then in conditions in which there was no wind or a parallelwind and we had had two lines burning, it would cost £100, whereas for a cross-wind and only one line it would cost £50. Cross-windconditions occurred three times more frequently than the conditions of no wind or a parallel wind, which demanded two burners, so that theaverage cost of the operation, on these calculations, would be £62 10s for landing an aircraft. He did not know whether that would be con-sidered as too high a figure for saving lives and perhaps for saving an aircraft like the Comet, which was worth £500,000. The cost oughtto be spread over the whole of the aircraft using the landings, much as Trinity House dues were spread over the whole of shipping. We mightthen be able to reduce the cost to 10s or 15s per aircraft landing. From the many other speeches which were made before the debateended, the following highlights emerged. MR. PARGITER was in favour of the most rapid development possible of the Comet, because it seemedthat this was our one aircraft which was so far ahead of competitors that it gave a real fighting chance to get on top of the world so far ascivil aviation was concerned. MR. W. T. ATTKEN referred to passenger comfort. Safety and pricewere important factors affecting airlines, but comfort, particularly on the ground, he would put very high on the list. He gave specific instanceswhich he had experienced on a recent flight to Africa. S L. KINGHORN said that he had a feeling about air travel that it wasall first class, and there was no second or third class. He would like to see a more democratic use of our airlines . . . to make our people—adults or young people in the industrial areas—air-minded. He mentioned the London Passenger Transport Flying Club and said that in view ofrearmament and the sums of money which had to be spent, one of the best ways to use a small portion of the total would be to help in therevival of the democratic flying clubs so that ordinary working men and women throughout the country could learn to fly. SIR WILLIAM DARLING referred to rates for the carriage of mail andto high landing fees. On internal operations B.E.A. paid landing fees of 8.66 per cent of revenue compared with 2.96 per cent on Continentaloperations: He referred to one "remarkable" reason given for Cor- poration unprofitability—the levy of a heavy petrol tax. It was withinthe knowledge of the House that other industries had to pay a heavy petrol tax, yet this great organization, he said, put forward that it hadto pay the same tax as others as a reason for not being successful. MR. RANKIN quoted figures in talking about what had been done foraircraft services in Scotland as a whole. During the period between 1945 and 1950, £1,428,000 had been spent on the maintenance anddevelopment of aerodromes. A sum of £1,050,000 had been spent on navigational services. On research, £375,000 had been spent in estab-lishing the "G" chain which it was hoped would lead to a reduction in aircraft accidents. In the five years since 1945, £2,560,000 had beenspent in construction, navigational and research services in Scotland. Some return was now evident, because increasing air-consciousness wasshown in Scotland today. In 1938, 27,000 passengers used the civil aviation services. In 1947 the number was 107,320, and last year ithad risen to 145,200. That was a significant and welcome development. MR. BESWICK'S reply and answers to questions at the end of thedebate included the statement (to Sir William Darling) that by far the greatest single item in the Corporations' accounts—of the order of£462,000—resulted from the services provided in Scotland. He pointed out that the whole 36 conversions of B.E.A. Dakotas had been given toScottish Aviation at Presrwick. Regarding services to the Western Isles> it was unlikely that a service could be given until a multi-cngined heli-copter became available for service three to five years from now. On the subject of Solents and Hermes he could state that during thelast four months of the Solents' operations, the six Solent flying-boats carried 3,900 passengers, while in a similar time the four Hermes hadcarried 4,317 passengers and proved so successful, bookings being so heavy, that the service to Nairobi was having to be increased. In connection with Fido, Mr. Beswick emphasized most strongly tnatthere had been no question of reducing the margin of safety or any reluctance to install Fido apparatus at some airports. If weather wastoo bad, the policy was either to cancel a flight or divert to fog-tree airports. Safety was ensured by this policy. If an aircraft set out lorthis country and in the course of flying the weather blotted out all we available airports, it was possible to resort to one airport at least witnFido. If Fido had been installed at either London Airport or NorthoK. it would not have secured additional safety. It would have b°"£r:additional regularity and additional punctuality. What price COUIG °= paid for these two essential factors ? It was a commercial oonsiderati-'Q)not a matter of safety. With the cost of landing one aircraft varying from £625 to £1,500, this system was clearly prohibitive.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
