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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 1774.PDF
938 FLIGHT, 14 December 1956 THE HUNGRY AIRLINES... the new medium-range transports is likely to be used on such anoperation. On the other hand, there are many medium-haul ser- vices in which one or two of the sectors are either short-haul orlong-haul; but clearly the new medium-range transports would operate such sectors. Scheduled all-cargo operations were ignored,as were the European medium-haul networks of American opera- tors, and vice versa. The I.C.A.O. Digest records the traffic—passengers, freight andmail—carried during one month of the year, and it has been assumed that the annual traffic will be twelve times this total.This of course assumes that seasonal peaks occurring at different times in different parts of the world will, when spread over thewhole twelve months, balance one another out. This inevitably does not provide the annual total to such a high order of accuracyas would a month-by-month examination of traffic; but it does provide a near approximation, and hence the general picture whichis the intent of this study. It would not in any case be possible to make a month by month examination, because the necessaryfigures are not available (the I.C.A.O. Digest is published every six months, in March and September). Altogether 310 international sectors were found to lie in themedium-haul band. These cannot all be shown for space reasons, but a sample selection appears in Table 2. The total traffic TABLE 1: MEDIUM-HAUL SECTOR TRAFFIC (Sample selection from 310 international sectors) Sector Copenhagen-Paris . Buenos Aires-Rio Rome-Tel Aviv Singapore-Djakarta Tangiers-Bordeaux . Taipei-Tokyo Distance (km) 1,013 2,0242,254 895 1.104 2,188 Monthly capacity hauled Pas- sengers (tonnes) 187 64.2116.3 179.4 24.9 12.5 both ways Cargo (tonnes) 36.06 6.02718.11 33.17 7.463 6.495 (see text) Mail (tonnes) 14.08 6.6044.209 43.59 1.341 19.28 Total (tonne- km X 1,000) 240.2 155.5312.0 230.0 37.2 83.8 Convair 880 Jet-Liner, the only one of the American medium-jet trio so far to be ordered. The engines are General Electric CJ-805s. Lockheed Electro, the most heavily ordered (128) of the new medium transports. Its turboprops are Allison 501s. 1951, after which it picked up—due, undoubtedly, to the intro-duction of tourist fares, particularly on the North Atlantic. Tourist traffic is generally heavier on long-haul services, because touristrates offer better returns to the airlines over longer distances. The introduction of third-class fares over the North Atlantic in1958 will almost certainly result in further increases in average journey distance. There are, it seems, no grounds for assumingthat medium-haul traffic's share of the world total will rise: on the contrary, it is more likely to give way to long-haul traffic.Any decrease would not be substantial: our guess is two or three per cent. But we have assumed that the medium-haul share oftotal international traffic in 1962 will remain the same—i.e., 32 per cent. This medium-haul share of international traffic might appearsurprisingly low. We must confess that our own eyebrows lifted momentarily at the result of our traffic study. But a cross-checkwith Tables 2 and 3 of Part 1, which give the capacity of (2) existing fleets and (3) new orders, shows that the medium-haulcapacity shares of the totals are respectively 35 per cent and 25 per cent. So much for international traffic, which of course is only one-third of total world traffic. (The actual proportion over the years appears to have remained fairly steady at about 30 to 35 per cent.)The other two-thirds is domestic traffic, of which the majority (80 per cent) is carried in the U.S.A. What proportion of domestic traffic is medium-haul? We know that the length of the average passenger trip for thewhole world—international and domestic—is 559 miles, plus or minus a few per cent. We have been unable to find a referenceto the average trip length of the international passenger, or the average trip length of the domestic passenger. But we do knowthe latter very nearly, because in the U.S.A., which accounts for 80 per cent of the world's domestic traffic, the figure is 550 miles. Both Douglas and Boeing have been offering junior versions of their big jets (DC-9 and 727) on the medium-haul market—so far without success. Here is a provisional general arrangement of the Douglas DC-9. hauled on these medium-haul stages during the month considered(March 1954) was found to be 46.67 million tonne-km, represent- ing an approximate annual traffic of 560 million tonne-km—i.e.,32 per cent of total international traffic in the year considered.* Thus, in that year, 32 per cent of international traffic, as opposedto domestic traffic, was carried between medium-haul stages. Will this medium-haul percentage remain the same in 1962? Aboutthe same proportion of traffic will always wish to fly over 500 to 1,500 mile sectors regardless of the type of equipment used to getit there. This contention is borne out by the fact that, since 1946, despite the steady introduction of larger and longer-range aircraft,the average length of passenger journey has fluctuated by less than six per cent (last year, for the whole world, it was 559 miles).There was a steady fall in average sector length from 1947 to * Total international traffic in 1954 was 1,750 million tonne-km, afigure computed from the I.A.T.A. "Bulletin" No. 21, plus the indi- vidual totals for non-I.A.T.A. airlines given in I.C.A.O. "Digest ofStatistics" No. 54, Traffic. As a matter of interest, the figure for I.A.T.A. carriers only was 1,681 million tonne-km.
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