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Aviation History
1953
1953 - 0238.PDF
236 FLIGHT CIVIL AVIATION . . . of freight and passengers, but also quantities of newspapers: "Pravda and other national newspapers are daily flown from Moscow to Leningrad, Rostov, Baku, Tashkent, Kuibyshev, Kiev, Novo sibirsk, Khabarovsk and other major cities. Several millions of copies of newspapers and magazines are daily carried by national and local air lines." Soviet international services, it was stated, fly to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, Eastern Germany, Mongolia, Finland, Austria and Afghanistan; the route between Russia and the Chinese People's Republic is served by aircraft of the Sino-Soviet Airline, which also operates a number of joint lines in the Far East. Other duties of the Soviet civil air force, said the article, include the airlifting of cargoes and machinery to the so-called "Com munist construction schemes," such as canals, power stations, etc., crop-spraying and forest-spraying. One novel application for air craft was the sowing of a special kind of grass along the future Turkmen Canal, in order to anchor the shifting sands there. WORLD AIRLINE RECORD THE work of compiling an overall source of reference on prac tically any subject is an unusually thankless task, as many authors know from bitter experience. Months of research are taken for granted by an ungrateful public, while reviewers show an uncanny talent for spotting the smallest of errors. Setting aside this latter temptation, we welcome the latest volume of Mr. Roy R. Roadcap's World Airline Record, whose 400 pages contain his torical, administrative, financial and operational data for 240 scheduled airlines. This edition includes 138 more airlines than its predecessor, and comes much nearer to meeting the claim implicit in the title. Airlines are reviewed under the separate headings of Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America and South America; in most cases the data mentioned above are supplemented by route- maps, and there are 22 photographic illustrations. Some of the smaller airlines have been omitted, and it would be untrue to describe the book as complete in every detail; nevertheless, the fact remains that World Airline Record is the only work of its kind. Providing a detailed description of the world's air-transport industry at an important evolutionary stage, it promises to become an indispensable part of the basic aviation library. One of the main obstacles in compiling a book of this kind is lack of co-operation on the part of many airlines. John Stroud, whose work as an air-transport historian is well-known, recently wrote to us that "Seekers after airline facts are often regarded as spies. I received poor treatment in Athens when endeavouring to compile a fleet list of T.A.E. and I have on another occasion received answers from only three U.S. local-service carriers after writing to 25 of them . . ." No less an authority than I.C.A.O. suffers from the same problem; last year's report on the activities of the Organization noted that "there were still eighteen countries with international airlines that had never filed any of the required reporting forms." "World Airline Record." Published by Roy R. Roadcap and Associates, 327, South La Salle Street, Chicago 3, Illinois, U.S.A. Price £4 10s. AMERICA'S AIRLINES IN 1952 WELL over half the 44 million passengers who used the world's scheduled air services last year flew with American domestic or international companies, according to the U.S. Air Transport Association's review of 1952. The review says that American air lines carried 27 m passengers, 9.7 per cent more than in 1951, and the total of 16,600 m revenue passenger-miles represented an increase of 17.3 per cent. Mail ton-miles increased by 7 per cent and cargo ton-miles by only 2.1 per cent to 97 m and 400 m respectively. ' Total revenue earned by the American airlines went up by about 10 per cent to £370 m, but profits were reduced by a 20 per cent rise in operating costs. Practically two-thirds of the total earnings went to the domestic lines, who reported revenue increases of 16.7 per cent from passenger tickets, 20.5 per cent from freight and 4.5 per cent from express; mail earnings, however, dropped by 2.1 per cent. A 10-15 Per cent increase in domestic passenger traffic is predicted for 1953. RAILWAYS FOLLOW B.E.A. LEAD GENERALLY accepted as an attempt to answer the competition of air and road transport, special cheap return fares for the London-Glasgow and London-Edinburgh routes were announced last week by British Railways. The cost will be £3 10s for either a weekly or fortnightly return ticket, compared with the old three- monthly third-class return fares of £5 17s 4d to Glasgow and £5 14s 8d to Edinburgh. Return fares by road, air (B.E.A. winter rate) and first-class train are £3, £& and £8 12s respectively, to either city. DC-7 PROGRESS FROM California comes the news that the wing and fuselage of the first Douglas DC-7—tfle DC-6 development—were recently joined at the company's Santa Monica plant, and installation of engines and undercarriage was started. The trans port is due to fly at about the end of March, and is estimated to have a cruising speed of 360 m.p.h. Titanium is said to be used "in large quantities" in the new machine and, in addition to the value of its high-strength properties at high temperatures, to result in a weight-saving of some 200 lb per aircraft. Orders for DC-7S have been received to date from American Airlines (25), United Airlines (25), Delta Airlines (4) and National Airlines (4). COMET ROUTE TO TOKYO APRIL 3rd is announced as the date scheduled for the intro-k duction of B.O.A.C. Comet services from London to Tokyo. The initial frequency of one return service weekly will be doubled from April 13th and the frequency of the present Argonaut services (at present there are four weekly in each direction) will be reduced correspondingly. The Tokyo service begins less than a year after the inauguration of Comet services to Johannesburg in May 1952. Since then, regular Comet services have also been introduced on the Ceylon and Singapore routes. On the long London-Tokyo route (approximately 10,000 miles) the Comet's high speed is seen to better advantage than on the other services. Flying via Rome, Beirut (or Cairo), Bahrein, Karachi, Delhi, Calcutta, Rangoon, Bangkok, Manila and Okinawa, Comets will reach Tokyo 33 hr 15 mins after leaving London; the fact that flying time will be only 26 hr 15 min emphasizes the short average time spent on refuelling stops. Elapsed time for the present Argonaut service, with night-stops at Rangoon and Hongkong, is 86 hr and the flying time is 45 hr 15 min. This does not, of course, represent the best time possible on the route with a piston-engined airliner. Air France operates a weekly Constellation 749 service from Paris to Tokyo which COLOMBO, Ceylon, the setting for this study of a Comet I refuelling, is the terminal of the third B.O.A.C. jet route to be • opened since regular ser vices began last May. Plans for a fourth—to Tokyo—are outlined in the paragraph above. Journey-times from Lon don are: Johannesburg, 23 hr 40 min; Colombo, 21 hr 35 min; Singapore, 27 hr 25 min; Tokyo, 33 hr 15 min. Pressure refuelling, enabling the Comet to take on 7,000 gallons of kerosine in 20 min, helps to cut down the time spent at intermediate points.
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