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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 0966.PDF
112 FLIGHT, 20 July 1956 L.T.U.'s English manager, Mr. Bernard Dromgoole (left) and their chief pilot, Capt. Roy MacDougall, ex-R.A.F. and B.O.A.C. LUFTTRANSPORT UNION . . . five German airports, taking on or dropping off passengers at twoof them on each flight, delays due to technical trouble totalled just two hours—a record superior even to that of Lufthansa'slocal services when they first started. This achievement has been due partly to good managementand good flying but chiefly to swift maintenance, for L.T.U. is the only charter company in Germany that has its own main-tenance staff, headed by a fully qualified chief engineer and radio engineer. The "chief," George Fox, who comes from B.E.A. viaFields of Croydon, has an experience of nine years on Vikings, and is in fact servicing today the very same aircraft he was incharge of nine years ago. The radio engineer, L. H. Head, ex-R.A.F., ex-British South American and West African Airways,has also been with Ferry Airports, Ltd., and was a radio inspector at London Airport. Besides these, L.T.U. has been fortunate inobtaining the services of a qualified German electrical engineer and nine German mechanics, five of them with some previousexperience on Vikings with B.E.A. in Berlin, and able to speak English! With this team it is already carrying out checks I andII, and expects next year to be able to do checks III and IV. This year the latter are being done by B.K.S. Engineering at Southend,and one of the arts of management is so to arrange the flying hours of the three aircraft (the company could use another two) thateach becomes due in rotation, without overlapping. The company's, and especially Mr. Dromgoole's, long associa-tion with B.K.S. has conferred another benefit. B.K.S. Engineering having bought up B.E.A.'s entire holding of Viking spares (£500,000worth), L.T.U. has acquired the general agency for all German- registered aircraft, and already holds £20,000 worth of stock,including two spare power units. This puts the company in a strong position vis-a-vis its competitors.At the time of writing L.T.U. has a flying backbone of five captains qualified to land at 1st and 2nd-class airfields by day andnight, and seven first officers, some of whom are still being trained up to this standard. Senior captain, in charge of operations andtraining, is a Rhodesian, Roy MacDougall, ex-Bomber Command and B.O.A.C. The other captains are Fox, an Englishman(ex-B.K.S. and Eagles); O'Neill, Irish (also from Eagles); Massey, a Canadian with Dakota experience, and von Tettenborn, German(ex-Swissair and former chief pilot of the Dr. Tiggis concern). Another German, Putter, ex-Luftwaffe and one-time Junkers testpilot (also recently arrived from Swissair) is about to be promoted to captain, and the first officers include an Englishman, an Ice-lander, a Swiss, a German and a Swiss-German. Capt. MacDougall runs this international team rather as a war-time international squadron of the R.A.F. (of which he has experi- ence), and the spirit among both air and ground crew is similar. Itis significant that among the flying staff no trade unionism exists —a deliberate policy on the part of the chief pilot, who believesthat where there are good managerial relations there is no justifica- tion for a rival loyalty. Nationalities are never mentioned, andevery pilot is a personality, not a cipher. Thus within a week of his arrival, Putter—who escaped from Russia in 1949 after beingsentenced to 15 years for "anti-Communist activity"—disclosed that his Christian name was Dietrich, with the result that he is nowcalled "Marlene" by his British colleagues. The complication and expense of flying from five internal air-ports, with the consequent need of positioning crews and sending replacements in the event of illness, is compensated for by thecompany's policy of concentrating on one external route. Over Europe, and particularly over the Alps, the route is the same for Majorca as it is for the Canary Islands. This not only facilitates the sending of a relief aircraft or spares in case of breakdown, but also enables the crews, through familiarity, to shorten their flying times by choosing the most economical heights and revs, thus cutting out refuelling stops. On the longest runs, to the Canary Islands or Rhodes—a roundtrip involving 25 flying hours from Diisseldorf and two overnight stops at Tangier—a flight engineer with spares, a radio operatorand a second air hostess are carried. On the "donkey run to Palma—nine times one week, five the next—two pilots and oneair hostess are all that is required, thanks to the installation of modern radio and A.D.F. equipment. There was therefore roomfor the writer as a supernumerary on one flight. Capt. MacDougall was in charge of the aircraft, Lilo Degelmann, ex-Pan American(she trained the other air hostesses), was in charge of the pas- sengers, and Putter, literally enjoying his second flight in a Viking,was at the controls. Leaving Frankfurt at 08.10, and calling at Stuttgart, we reached Majorca from there in 4£ hours, and it waspleasant to see an ex-R.A.F. and an ex-Luftwaffe pilot flying side by side.The Palma runway, approached through mountains, is 1,500 metres long, but as the first 200 are unusable owing to a wall andorange trees, and a Viking needs 1,200, there is usually just 100 metres to spare, and only category I pilots are eligible toland on it. Putter won the first of his pair of spurs by setting us down very nicely. He won the second on the return journeyover the Alps, where the advantage of employing pilots with Swissair experience became apparent. Cloud base was at 3,500ft,and another aircraft of the same company, flying ten minutes ahead, reported heavy icing at 10,000ft. Putter, with his localknowledge, obtained permission to fly below cloud—i.e., between the mountains instead of over them. Despite this, he estimatedwe would reach Stuttgart at precisely 18.44—and we did. A brand-new company of mixed nationality supplying a brand-new market on virgin territory—L.T.U. has measured the risks soberly, aware that success after this first experimental yeardepends on gaining the lead in experience, and a record of good service and safety. Its policy of distributing the initial contractsover a wide field, though costly, is justified by the experimental nature of the market itself; while its technical achievement, uniqueamong its rivals, of becoming an independent, self-servicing unit, has already, with good planning and good flying, yielded an aver-age earning rate per aircraft of £65 per hour on an estimated basis of 1,500 hours' utilization per annum. Provided it is allowed to go on competing on equal terms in anopen market, its prospects are good. L.T.U. is the only German charter company to do its own maintenance. Here some of its German mechanics, five of whom have served with B.E.A. in Berlin, work on one of the Vikings. "FLIGHT" PHOTOGRAPHS A/I"ANY of the photographs reproduced in Flight, i.e., thoseJ-"-1- taken by our own photographic staff (as indicated on pub- lication) are subsequently available in the form of high-qualityprints. Prices are as follows (dimensions given in inches): 5i x 3%, Is 4d (glossy or semi-matt, unmounted), or 2s (tonedsepia, unmounted); 6x4, 2s 6d or 4s; 8x6, 3s 6d or 5s 6d; 10x8, 5s or 7s lOd; 12x10, 6s or 9s 8d; 15x12, 9s 6d or13s; 20 x 16 (semi-matt only), 13s or 18s. Also available are a postcard series, totalling over 200, depict-ing both historic and modern aircraft of the R.F.C., R.N.A.S., R.A.F. and Fleet Air Arm. Complete lists of the series are obtain-able on application. Prices are 8d each card, or 7^d each for quantities of a dozen or more. One view only—in most cases agood three-quarter front or side—is available for each aircraft type. Also available as postcards, at the same prices, are reproductionsof general-arrangement drawings of some 20 British aircraft that have appeared in our "Aircraft Intelligence" pages.
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