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Aviation History
1951
1951 - 2213.PDF
V 576 PRODUCTION IN PROGRESS: This first photograph of Lockheed Super Constellations in quantity production shows five machines to be already in an advanced stage of assembly. Eighty-six have been ordered and the first of them will go to Eastern Air Lines. CIVIL AVIATION . . . passing of icing warnings by meteorological officers to airport managers for distribution to the operators concerned. The importance of using de-icing fluid on all surfaces (including airscrew blades) before take-off is also stressed. In this connection, parti- cular care is necessary because pilot control may be seriously affected by any residual irregularity on partially cleared surfaces or by any lack of symmetry if some parts of the aircraft are thoroughly cleared and others are not. REVISED U.K. MAIL RATES ALTHOUGH no official confirmation was forth- **• coming at the time of going to press, it is believed that B.O.A.C. has successfully negotiated an increase in the rate of payment for the carriage of first-class mails originating in the United King- dom. The new rate, however, is thought to be still considerably below the full international scale, augmentation to which would mean an increase of 1i1.5d per ton-mile. The British Post Office has been paying the Corporation at an average rate of 3.27 gold francs (approximately 133.5d per ton-mile) or just over half the full international rate. The increase upon which the Post Office is now believed to have agreed is of an order that should add a little over £1,000,000 to the Corporation's annual revenue. Payments for the carriage of mail of foreign origin are normally fixed by international agreement; the accepted rate for long- distance operations stands at present at a figure of 6 gold francs per ton-kilometre, equivalent to 245d per ton-mile. Individual countries, however, pay their own airlines at rates fixed by each national postal authority. In the Corporation's last annual report it was stated that, with few exceptions, B.O.A.C. received a lower rate from the G.P.O. than that paid to other international airlines. With few exceptions, also, other countries paid more for airmail postage than did the British commercial user. The report also stated that, if the present anomalies were removed, the Corpora- tion's need for an Exchequer grant could be brought to so low a figure that it would provide an immense stimulus to all B.O.A.C. personnel to attempt to eliminate the deficit altogether. In the financial year ended March 31st last, revenue from mail of both foreign and U.K. origin amounted to about £6,200,000, or approximately a quarter of B.O.A.C.'s total revenue. I.C.A.O.S PROGRESS IN ECONOMICS IN a speech made before the I.C.A.O. Air Transport Committee,of which he was recently elected chairman, Sir Frederick Tymms, K.C.I.E., M.C., F.R.Ae.S., United Kingdom representa- tive to the I.C.A.O. Council, described the growing impor- tance of some of the work carried out by the organization towards the resolution of the economic problems of international air transport. There had previously been a feeling, he said, that this progress had not been compar- able with that achieved in the technical field. This was now becoming untrue. The four resolutions on multiple and burdensome taxation which tiac! *"**•» 1 just been adopted by the I.C.A.O. Council were of very great im- portance. Sir Frederick thought that the lack of progress in the Air Transport Committee was not entirely due to the fact that the problems which it had to face were those in which conflicting national interests were the main factors. It seemed, he continued, that the key to the solution of many of the disputes was far less a matter of resolving national difficulties than of applying clear and concentrated thought to the facts. There was, however, one outstanding problem of which this was not true. The conception of a multilateral agreement on commercial rights in international air transport had failed by reason of the conflict of interests between major operators and the FLIGHT Sir Frederick Tyrr.ms. countries who sought to protect their own embryonic air transport industries. Sir Frederick was of the opinion that until a way could be found to satisfy or reconcile these two conflicting interests there would be little point in calling another international conference on the subject. He listed the major items of urgent work for the coming session of the Air Transport Committee as being : (i) an analysis of the rights conferred by Article 5 of the Convention and the definition of "scheduled international air services"; (ii) the problem of charges for air transport and air navigation services [this is one of I.C.A.O.'s greatest headaches and is a question which has recently acquired a new urgency in the light of the large-scale traffic expansion that is expected to follow the introducticn of tourist- class travel]; (iii) the economic problems involved in the draft Con- vention on Damage Caused by Foreign Aircraft to Third Parties on the Surface. Sir Frederick reviewed also the major items of work accom- plished by the Air Transport Committee in the past year. The international airmail study was completed and an I.C.A.O. memorandum on the subject was forwarded to the Universal Postal Union last December. On the same date the Council also adopted the Committee's resolution designed to eliminate multiple insurance and to mitigate some of the burdensome effects of national insurance requirements. On the subject of taxation the Council's last action was on October 4th last, when it established resolutions dealing with taxes on fuel, lubricants, consumable stores, income, property and sales of air transportation. On June 1st the Committee adopted a resolution aimed at simplify- ing procedures governing the registration of aircraft delivered by air. During the greater part of the year, however, its members had been mainly concerned with the subject of scheduled and non- scheduled air services. Complementing the work of the Commit- tee, the Secretariat had been responsible for the publication during the year of 11 statistical summaries, covering traffic statistics, origin and destination of passengers, traffic flow, taxes and sub- sidies, fleets and personnel. The Secretariat had also collaborated with the World Health Organization in the preparation of inter- national sanitary regulations. PAN AMERICAN'S "TOURIST" INTENTIONS •"TODAY, November 2nd, the American Civil Aeronautics -•- Board is due to meet in an attempt to eliminate the deadlock between the North Atlantic airline operators on the question of low-cost tourist services. It will be recalled that last September an I.A.T.A. sub-committee, set up to work out details of a second- class-service fare-structure, broke down following disagreement. The leading protagonists of tourist-class travel have undoubtedly been P.A.A., who are so keen to offer cheap travel to the masses that they have even announced their intention of seeking approval for such services outside the framework of I.A.T.A. Later this ; month a further meeting of I.A.T.A. is scheduled to discuss the problem and this will in fact provide one of the last opportunities to obtain inter-line agreement before April 1st, I9S2J when au North Atlantic fare agreements expire and on which date P.A.A. : would, if necessary, be able to inaugurate tourist-class Atlantic ••. travel independently. •: Of particular interest is the economic basis on which the com- • pany hopes to run the service. Across the Atlantic, Pan-American proposes to use either 82-passenger DC-6B5 or 55-passenger : DC-4S. The flight schedule will be approximately 13 hr between
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