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Aviation History
1956
1956 - 1810.PDF
974 FLIGHT The year 1956, at its close in ten days' time, will have seen the completion and delivery of 83 Viscounts (169 since deliveries began in 1953). Here, seen at Hum, is the latest specimen, the first V.760 for Hong Kong. CIVIL AVIATION CLOSING OF THE RANKS AS we briefly recorded last week, the independents have madea further move towards consolidating their strength. The British Aviation Services Group has bought the Lancashire Air-craft Corporation—after negotiations which began, we understand, six months ago. Rumours earlier this year about a move amongthe independents to join forces can probably be linked to this new merger, as also to Airwork's acquisition of Transair (Flight,August 24). In announcing his company's purchase of the Lancashire Air-craft Corporation, Mr. Eoin C. Mekie, chairman of British Avia- tion Services, said: "We have purchased the Lancashire AircraftCorporation to enable us to consolidate and expand our position in the north-west corner of the British Isles." The airline would,he added, retain its individual identity within the B.A.S. Group, and would continue to be based on Squires Gate Airport, Black-pool. Mr. Eric Rylands, founder of L.A.C., and vendor of the company, will continue as a member of the L.A.C. Board. Lancashire Aircraft Corporation has a fleet of two DouglasDC-3s, two D.H. Dragon Rapides and a D.H.86B. Domestic services based on Blackpool are operated to Leeds and to the Isleof Man and Jersey, and also from Birmingham to the Isle of Man. B.A.S., parent also of Silver City, Air Kruise, Britavia, Aquilaand Manx, must now have the largest privately owned aircraft fleet in the country; it includes 14 Bristol Superfreighters, eightBristol Freighter Mk 21s, seven DC-3s, five Hermes IVs, three Solents, two Rapides and one D.H.86B. COMET TO THE EAST TN these pages last week we recorded a statement by Mr. Hugh•*• Rice, de Havilland's Far East Manager, that the Comet 4 would be landing regularly at Tokyo international airport "early in 1958."Since June 1958 has previously been given as the date of delivery to B.O.A.C., two inferences could be drawn from what Mr. Ricehad to say: that the Comet might be in service earlier than the promised date, and that B.O.A.C. would depart from tradition bynot using its South African routes for the introduction of a new aircraft. Confirmation was forthcoming from Johannesburg last week,when Mr. Basil Smallpeice, B.O.A.C.'s managing director, said at the completion of a three-week visit to the Union that Cometswould be put on to the Far East run to meet jet competition from PanAm. He said that the American airline would introducea Boeing 707-120 service from London to Sydney via New York soon after B.O.A.C. introduced the Comet 4. But Mr. Smallpeicegave the date for first Comet services as "the end of 1958." The Comet 4, said B.O.A.C.'s managing director, would beintroduced on the South African run about a year after the start of the Far Eastern service. In the meantime, South Africa wouldbe served by Britannia 100s, and by Britannia 300s which would be introduced in 1958. These long-range Britannias would be usedto inaugurate a single-stop London-Johannesburg service, calling only at Khartoum or Kano. LONDON AIRPORT PICTORIAL TN ten brief years, London Airport has become a landmark that-•- attracts over a million sightseers a year. Although impressive both in size and in the architecture of the central buildings, theairport has an appeal—the cosmopolitan variety of the passengers, the fascination of "going foreign" and the kaleidescope of aircraftdepartures and arrivals—that is romantic by association rather than visually. But to savour the maximum enjoyment of the scene itis necessary to have some knowledge of how the airport is run —the manner in which passengers embark, for instance, or howapproaches in bad weather are controlled—in order to interpret what can be seen. A new official brochure* on the Airport, prepared for the *"London Airport," prepared for the M.T.C.A. by the Central Officeof Information, Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Price 4s. Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation by the Central Officeof Information, is likely to be well received. There are a good many statistics underlining the size of the undertaking (90,000flights each year, operated by 36 airlines of 27 countries; as much electricity consumed annually as by the towns of Reigate orShrewsbury) and some rather unusual ones (the number of invalid passengers with fractures rises to five a day with the return ofthe "less fortunate devotees" of ski-ing), but the temptation to expand the text has been avoided. The story of London Airportis told in the pictures; the text has been used only to fill in the background to the captions and to explain different aspects ofthe airport scene by short chapters on, e.g., "Passenger's Progress," "Pilot's Progress," "Behind the Scenes"—a summary of thefunctions of the 25,000 people who are employed. Considerable imagination has been used in making the presen-tation lively and varied. Boldly, and entirely successfully, the many photographs are leavened by an alternation of FeliksTopolski's impressionist drawings with Gordon Cullen's archi- tectural ones. Topolski's boisterous drawing of the gaitered bishopgesturing wifc his gamp is a near masterpiece of the restaurant- terrace atmosphere; and Cullen has captured, in his line-and-tonedrawings, the quiet spaciousness of the airport restaurant interiors and the functional severity of Mr. Frederick Gibberd's architec-ture. The choice of illustration-colour, which sometimes inclines tobilious yellow and muddy grey, is not so happy; but this is a minor criticism. The story is well-told and absorbing. Visitorsto London Airport will find this publication more useful than any peaked-cap guide could be, for it takes them behind the "noadmittance" scenes; and for the casual reader it will provide some good browsing. Civil aviation and Christmas are pleasantly conjoined in this picture of "Tex" Johnston, Boeing's chief test pilot, and Miss Bats Manausa presenting one of fifteen Christmas trees to the vice-president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Mr. George Gose. The trees had been flown from Seattle in the Boeing 707 (see right).
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