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Aviation History
1955
1955 - 1651.PDF
772 FLIGHT, 18 November 1955 EIRE'S AIRLINE Aer Lingus—a Brief Survey; Good Progress with Viscounts ~ : EI-AFV "St. Patrick," flagship of the Aer Lingus fleet of tour Viscounts, is seen at Dublin Airport, centre of the network. Aer Lingus were the first airline outside England to order Viscounts. THE past year has been an eventful and satisfying one forAer Lingus Teoranta, the national airline of Eire. High-lights have included the completion of the first full year of operation by the Viscount fleet (which has logged more than10,000 hr), the announcement of a profit for the financial year 1954-55 and the recent opening of a new London office. Compared to the majority of national airlines, Aer Lingus arenot a large organization. The company employs some 1,500 people, 150 of whom are aircrew, and operates a fleet of thirteenDC-3s and four V.707 Viscounts which together carried 338,000 passengers, 6,040 short tons of cargo and 1,715 short tons of mailduring 1954-55. The major problem faced by Aer Lingus is the familiar Euro-pean one of seasonal unbalance of traffic-flow, though in the case of the Irish airline its effects are exceptionally marked.Indeed, the seasonal nature of their traffic compels Aer Lingus to maintain an organization and aircraft fleet nearly twice aslarge as would be necessary if the same volume of traffic were spread evenly through the year. The company also has to compete with long-established andwell-organized surface transport, and a recent survey showed that only ten per cent of the largest group of passengersoriginating from the United Kingdom—those visiting relatives in Ireland—travelled to and from Ireland by air. The samesurvey also showed that travel on the route is by no means confined to the upper-income groups, for it was found thatlower-income group passengers comprised over half of the air traffic during the peak period of 1954.The effects of weekend and summer peaks on traffic-flow are illustrated by the fact that in July 1954 the airline carried 3,423passengers in one 21 hr period, whereas only 228 passengers were carried on a "trough" day in February of that year.The airline has revised its fare-structures to encourage mid- week and off-peak-hour travel by the introduction of "Dawn-flights" and "Starflights," but there is no tailor-made solution to the summer-peak difficulties. To some extent, the winter off-season has been countered by increased carriage of cargo and mail, charter flights and by arranging major fleet overhauls inwinter. A factor of great significance was the introduction of theViscount to the main routes in April 1954. The passenger-appeal of these turboprop aircraft has enhanced the popularity of the"all-Viscount" 'Dublin-London route—a service second only to the London-Paris route in terms of passenger traffic density.Aer Lingus are very satisfied with the Viscount's performance during the first year of operation. Three Viscounts were usedon scheduled flights and the fourth as standby and reserve air- craft. The four aeroplanes averaged 1,357 revenue hours perannum during the first ten months of use; this figure is regarded as satisfactory for a small fleet during its first year of operation. Aer Lingus Teoranta (Air Fleet, Ltd.) are a subsidiary of AerRianta Teoranta (Air Routes, Ltd.) (the Irish Government com- pany which operates the airports of Dublin and Shannon) andof British European Airways Corporation. The former holds 60 per cent of the share capital and the latter 40 per cent. The1946 agreement between the Irish and British Governments provided that Aer Lingus should operate all scheduled servicesbetween the Republic and the United Kingdom, and that profits and losses should be shared equally between the parties. Onthe other hand, profits from routes to European destinations are divided according to the shareholding in the company, whilelosses are equally shared. During the last few months,' discus- sions have been in progress between the two governments for arevision of the agreement, but, so far, no statement of the out- come has been made. It is surmised in Dublin that the share-holding will be altered, and that B.E.A. may operate into Dublin —and, perhaps, into Cork, when the proposed new airport isbuilt there. At present, K.L.M. are the only foreign airline operating into Dublin on the joint Dublin-Amsterdam route, but, if the recent Anglo-German air agreement is any guide tothings to come, it is possible that Lufthansa may open a route to Dublin. A glance at the routes of Aer Lingus shows it to be an ultra-short-haul operator, for the average passenger pays £4 18s to travel 224 miles. These routes are of two kinds, the all-the-year-round service and the summer season route. During the winter months, the services are reduced to London, Paris, Amster-dam, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff/ Bristol and to Shannon, but there are services to the Isle of Man,Edinburgh, Jersey, Biarritz/Lourdes and Lourdes/Barcelona during the summer season. Most of these routes are served bythe evergreen DC-3, the Viscounts being used on the London, Paris and Amsterdam services. Six of the DC-3s are fitted withdouble loading-doors and folding roof-racks, enabling up to nine stretchers to be installed, together with seats for 18 passengers,and these are used on the Lourdes Pilgrimage flights. The other seven are 32-seaters, having eight rows of four-abreast non-reclining seats on rails, and all can be converted very rapidly to cargo-carrying. The four Viscounts have the 53-seat interiorand are now fitted with Rolls-Royce Dart 506 engines. Aer Lingus were the first operator to have Viscounts fitted with theMurphy MR69 public-address system on delivery. All Aer Lingus aeroplanes are named after Irish saints, EI-AFV, theViscount flagship, being St. Patrick. Last spring the fleet appeared with each aircraft's name beneath the flight-deck inIrish script, a fact which may have puzzled many people outside Ireland. In Ireland there are two official languages, Erse andEnglish, and previously the names were in English. In November, 1950, Aer Lingus were awarded the CumberbatchTrophy by the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators of the British Empire for "safety and regularity of operations." Theonly Aer Lingus accident involving loss of life among passengers occurred in January 1952, when a DC-3 crashed in the Welshmountains; violent turbulence in the lee of Snowdon was regarded as the probable cause. A great deal of the credit forthe airline's safety standards is, of course, due to the efforts of the engineering division of Aer Lingus at Dublin Airport, Collins-town, County Dublin. Here, about 5$ miles north of Dublin, are situated the workshops, machine-shops, ancillary equipmentlaboratories and test-bays, drawing-offices, stores and adminis- tration blocks. Besides the overhaul of all fleet units, the divisionis also A.R.B.-licensed for the manufacture of aircraft components and sub-assemblies under contract to the Bristol Aeroplane Co.and to Vickers-Armstrongs, Ltd. Technical courses for Viscount maintenance engineers of Central African Airways Corporationhave been held at Dublin Airport, and Viscount operations manuals, prepared by the company in the early days for their ownstaff, have been supplied to a number of Viscount operators and prospective Viscount customers. On the aircrew-training side,Aer Lingus have undertaken the conversion and line-training to Viscounts of a number of Central African Airways pilots and oftwo pilots of the Department of Civil Aviation, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.At Shannon, on the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland, the Aer Lingus traffic-handling unit has achieved a reputation forefficiency in handling the aircraft of all the transatlantic scheduled operators who use the airport. Another activity of the airline isthe Aer Rianta Education Service which, since 1950, has dis- tributed air information, organized lectures on aviation andconducted instructional airport tours for Irish schoolchildren. The accounts of Aer Lingus for 1954-55 showed a surplus of£84,600. Payment of charges for State services, interest on capital expenditure and depreciation left a net profit of £26,548,which was set against the accumulated deficit of £145,976. Future profits will be set aside in the same way until the deficithas been eliminated, enabling Aer Lingus to remain independent of State assistance (except in the provision of capital), as it hasdone for the past five years. L. S.
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