FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1955
1955 - 0567.PDF
FLIGHT, 29 April 1955 567 CIVIL AVIATION AN AUSTRALIAN ACHIEVEMENT TN a statement outlining the Viscount's progress in service with•*• Trans-Australia Airlines, Vickers-Armstrongs report that the 50,000th Australian Viscount passenger was carried on April 10th."This," say Vickers, "is a remarkable achievement when it is recalled that T.A.A. started Viscount services as recently asDecember 18th last and had only two aircraft in use until January 1st, when a third Viscount was scheduled. A fourth air-craft came into service on February 1st." An average fleet of 3-j T.A.A. Viscounts thus carried 50,000passengers in 113 days. Their load passenger factor has averaged 85.2 per cent, and daily utilization has averaged 7.8 hr per aircraft;individual aircraft have, on occasions, logged 11 hr in a day. Between March 17th and March 30th all the four Viscounts inuse were fully serviceable each day. The strength of T.A.A.'s Viscount fleet was recently increasedfrom four aircraft to five, and a sixth will follow later this year. Routes operated include Sydney - Brisbane, Sydney - Melbourneand Melbourne - Adelaide - Perth. Vickers calculate that the total distance now flown daily byViscounts in Europe, Australia and Canada is equivalent to more than twice round the world. RINGWAY AGREEMENT CONCLUDED HPO mark the conclusion of protracted negotiations between*- Manchester Corporation and the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, a luncheon was held at Manchester Town Hallon Friday, April 22nd. An agreement between the two parties provides that Manchester will continue to own and operate Ring-way Airport, but that the M.T.C.A. will provide technical services and contribute to future development costs. It was planned that the appropriate documents would behanded over to Councillor L. W. Biggs, chairman of the airport committee, but the Minister, the Rt. Hon. J. A. Boyd-Carpenter,was prevented at the last moment from attending. He had arranged, however, to produce the documents on Saturday atRingway Airport at noon; meanwhile he was represented by Mr. G. I. Morris, his under-secretary for ground services.All this was explained at the luncheon by the Lord Mayor, Aid. J. S. Harper, who called upon Councillor Biggs to proposethe main toast, "The Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation." In the proposal, Mr. Biggs pointed out that the fusion ofinterests of Municipality and State in the future development of Ringway Airport provided a possible pattern for other airports.Manchester, as the first city with a licensed airport, had been loath to part with its interests and the present arrangement inwhich finance and development were to be shared was the result of long but co-operative dealings with the Ministry. Furtherdevelopments would be an extension (from 5,900 to 7,000ft) of the main runway, and terminal buildings of the most modernkind; three-quarters of the development cost would be borne by the Government. The approximate cost of Government"effects," including hangars, handed over to Manchester is quoted as £250,000. LOGGING TIME WITH Q.E.A. SOME impressive utilization figures with their Super Constella-tions have been reported by Qantas Empire Airways. It is stated that an average of 10 hours' revenue flying daily wasachieved on the company's trans-Pacific route during the peak period of 1954, only a few weeks after the aircraft had enteredservice. Carrying payloads of 15-20,000 lb, the L.1049s have on most occasions been over-flying Canton Island, thus coveringthe 3,190 miles between Honolulu and Fiji in a single hop. Delivery of the Qantas Super Constellations began in May 1954and the fleet now totals ten. By the first week in February 1955 they had made 151 trans-Pacific crossings and 45 flightsbetween Sydney and London, carrying 12,250 passengers and flying 6,850 hours. Average daily utilization of the fleet over thewhole route system is 8 to 8i hours. ATLANTIC AIR-DROP r DAKOTA G-AMSU, operated by Dan-Air Services, Ltd., re-cently took the leading part in what is believed to be the first operation of its kind—an emergency air-drop of spare parts to aship in the Atlantic. The spares—pistons and rings of llin dia- meter—were required by the S.S. Capetan Was, disabled anddrifting some 200 n.m. W.S.W. of Fastnet. Commanded by Capt. Watson, the Dakota left Blackbushe Air- , port in the early hours of April 13th for Shannon, where it wasrefuelled. The met. office at Shannon reported poor visibility and low cloud in the area of the ship, and take-off from Shannon was therefore delayed until contact with the ship could be made through Valencia marine radio station, and a weather actualobtained. The aircraft left Shannon at 0930 hr and made immediatevisual contact with the ship some two hours later. As the aircraft approached and Capt. Watson circled the ship to make positiveidentification, a dinghy was seen pulling away to a position some 100 yd from the ship. After one dummy run Capt. Watson flew atreduced airspeed past the dinghy with wheels and flaps lowered, and dropped the package at low level some 50 yd from the dinghy.Consisting of a sealed drum containing the spare parts, with an outer protective padding of cork, the package was pushed out bya crew member through the passenger entrance, the door of which had been removed before take-off. As the aircraft left the areathe master of the ship signalled that the spares were safely on board and undamaged. The brokers responsible for arranging the charter were E. A.Gibson and Co., Ltd., of London. PAKISTAN MERGER ""THE amalgamation of Pakistan International Airlines with-*- Orient Airlines to form the Pakistan International Airlines Corporation became effective on April 1st, 1955. The PakistanGovernment has a controlling interest in the new corporation, whose principal officials are Mr. Mirza Ahmad Ispahani, chairmanof the board of directors and Mr. F. M. McGregor, general manager. Henceforth all services, domestic and international,will be operated under the banner of P.I.A. BUSHMASTER, ALIAS TRIMOTOR A 1955 version of the Ford Trimotor, first certificated in 1926,**• is soon to take the air. A Californian company, Hayden Air- craft Corp., have slightly redesigned the old aircraft and plan tobuild it with the simplest possible factory tooling, and to fit it only with such equipment as will be required for V.F.R. flight inundeveloped regions. Some alterations have been made to the original design, par-ticularly in cockpit layout. Flaps have been added and the fuse- lage has been widened by 18in, the floor strengthened, controlcables re-routed and slight improvements made to the vertical tail surfaces. It is also intended to fit lighter and more powerfulengines than the original Trimotor carried, and to house these in cowlings giving better temperature control. It is reported that thenew engines may be Pratt and Whitney R-985s. Some of the estimated figures for the new aircraft, which willbe called the Stout Bushmaster, are: all-up weight 12,500 lb, payload 5,000 lb, and range 525 m. The cruising speed is to be125 m.p.h. and the stalling speed a mere 40 m.p.h. Some 30 of the original Trimotors are still flying in America. RECRUITMENT OF AIRLINE PILOTS TN the April issue of its journal The Log, the British Air Line•*- Pilots Association comments critically on the recent findings of the joint Air Ministry/M.T.C.A. committee appointed to inves-tigate the supply of pilots for civil aviation. It may be recalled (Flight, March 11th, page 293) that the committee's main con-clusions were: (1) the R.A.F. would continue to provide an adequate field of civil-aviation recruitment for pilots for "at leastthe next seven or eight years," (2) "the age-spread, experience and technical background" of ex-R.A.F. pilots should be acceptable tocivil aviation, (3) the setting-up of an independent civil-aviation flying training scheme supported from public funds was thereforenot justified, and (4) the whole question of future recruitment should be reviewed after four years. These conclusions were referred to by Mr. Profumo, Parlia-mentary Secretary to the M.T.C.A., in the course of a Commons debate on February 25th, when the House discussed the scheme,suggested by the Air League, for the training of commercial pilots. B.A.L.P.A.'s criticisms, with which Flight is largely in agree-ment, include the following: — "The main conclusion that the R.A.F. could continue to providefor a field of recruitment adequate to meet the needs of civil aviation was based largely on a canvass of some 500 R.A.F. pilots due to leave theservice within a period of two years from the date of the announcement. Mr. Profumo, however, had to make an important reservation in respectof the conclusion, which reservation is typical of what has happened previously in relation to this subject. Briefly, it was that, due to thechange in R.A.F. policy announced within a day or two of the debate, the Ministry was not certain how far the main conclusion was acorrect one. "This illustrates the point that this Association has made on practic-ally every occasion it has raised the subject in the past, namely, that it is impossible for civil operators to plan ahead on the basis of Air Ministrypolicy and prognostications. . . . The report may well be rendered value- less by that change in policy and there is no guarantee that any futurereport presented in the same way may not suffer the same fate. "We are not impressed by the composition of the committee set up by
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
