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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 1334.PDF
PLIGHT, IT, July 1951 CIVIL AVIATION THREE-ENGINED Fiat G.2l2s have been acquired by the French airline, Compagnie Air Transport. These comfortable 30-34 seat machines are also used on the long- distance routes of Ali-Flotte Riunite and the Egyptian international operator, S.A.I.D.E. THOSE UNECONOMIC FLYING BOATS FI these days when operators of the fiying-boat are extremelyfew and far between, it is always interesting to hear somethingof the reasons why the members of this select band still remain faithful to their choice of aircraft. In this case the news comesfrom one of the lesser-known airlines in South America, the Compania Aeronautica Uruguay S.A., whose fleet consists of twoPegasus-powered Sunderland 3s and one Pratt and Whitney- engined Sunderland 5. The company's route is from Montevideo across the estuary ofthe Rio Plata to Buenos Aires. Traffic between these two major cities is considerable, and whereas the journey by steamer requiresan overnight crossing, airline distance involves a flight of approxi- mately fifty minutes. A smaller section is also operated fromBuenos Aires to Colonia. The facilities offered by C.A.U.S.A. can best be appreciatedwhen the record of utilization and passenger totals is considered. Twice-daily return services are flown between Montevideo andBuenos Aires, continuing to Colonia. This route is covered six days a week throughout the year. Saturday night and Sunday aredevoted to maintenance; most of the work, including engine changes, is carried out on the water. During the summer monthseach service is operated at 100 per cent load-factor; even in winter this is only reduced to 98 per cent of the offered capacity. Averageaircraft utilization, including charter flights, works out at 2,000 hr a year. These remarkably high load-factors have enabled the com-pany to charge only 45 pesos for the return flight over the 210 km between Montevideo and Buenos Aires : this represents the sur-prisingly low figure of 46 to 4jd a mile, and approximates to the 4Jd-a-mile return fares offered by another flying-boat operator, AUSTRAL/ABOUND. Lost Thursday, "So/combe," another ex-B.O.A.C. Solent, left Belfast on its way to Australia, where it will go into service with Trans-Oceanic Airways on the route via Hobart, Sydney and Port Moresby, boarding the boat just before departure are (left) Capt. Brian Monckton, managing director of T.O.A., with his 2nd pilot, Mr. foote. The company has on order a third Solent, which is expected to leave Belfast in late September. Incidentally, the first of two 51-seat Sunderland conversions ordered by the Argentinian operator A.L.F.A. also began its delivery flight from Belfast last week. Tasman Empire Airways, who use Solent IVs. This rate, inci-dentally, is claimed to be the lowest fare charged by any airline operating in the world today. It is, indeed, a pat on the back for the redoubtable Sunderlandsthat they should, in complete safety, have carried over a quarter of a million passengers in South America since 1945. Even morenoteworthy is the fact that this has been done efficiently and economically with an aircraft originally designed for stage lengthsmany times greater than those called for by C.A.U.S.A.'s present requirements. • . •-./ T.W.A.'S INTERNATIONAL TRAFFIC ON the sixth anniversary of T.W.A.'s certification to extend itsroute network to the Far East (the actual day was July 5th) the company announced that the record total of nearly 63,000passengers had flown on its international routes during the first half of this year. This represents an increase of 15.5 per cent overthe corresponding period in 1950, which again was a record year for the company's international traffic. The passenger-mileagefigure for the first half of 1951 has been estimated at 157,409,000. In the six years since the Far Eastern certificate was granted,the airline has shown a steady growth in the totals of both pas- sengers flown and the number of points served on its 21,000-mileinternational network. In the first five months of transatlantic operations from February to July, 1946, T.W.A. carried 12,380international passengers; in the comparable period this year, the total was 56,182—an increase of over 354 per cent. T.W.A.'sfirst regular service across the Atlantic was scheduled on February 5th, 1946, with two flights weekly to Shannon andParis from New York. Within a few weeks this service had been extended to Geneva, Rome, Athens and Cairo. By May 1946 thecompany had inaugurated a southern route segment via the Azores to Lisbon and Madrid, and within a year was operatingto Bombay. Subsequently Zurich and Milan were added. Last September President Truman decided that the company shouldintroduce scheduled flights between London and Frankfurt-on- Main, Germany. The company's present network takes in twenty destinations inseventeen countries; the schedules include 58 Constellation flights weekly across the Atlantic. CHARTER MARKET DIFFICULTIES - DURING recent weeks the British air-charter market appearsto have been near a state of complete chaos. One of the main difficulties is the drastic shortage of aircraft (passenger-carryingmachines in particular) which has made itself apparent at a time when the passenger business is at its peak. The reasons for thissituation are several. In the first place, the longer passenger flights, especially on transatlantic charters, are usually made byscheduled airlines using positioning aircraft on a charter basis. By this method one-way rates can be quoted. In the UnitedKingdom there are at the moment no aircraft suitable for trans- atlantic charter work, as even Yorks working on a very reducedpayload would have to make the flight via Iceland and Greenland. In any case, these aircraft would have difficulty in obtaining returnloads from America. Practically all the regular airlines are fully booked for the nextfew months, and in many cases ships' crews—ordinarily ideal cargoes—are now having extreme difficulty in finding accom-modation. A few offers have been made by regular operators to fly crews across the Atlantic, but in general such offers are provingvery difficult to arrange. The prices charged show an increase on those for similar flights made a few months ago, but are stillbelow the normal fare. Crews travelling to and from the Far East can find no accom-modation whatsoever,ras the Yorks" which have been used for
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