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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0423.PDF
29 March 1957 425 SILVER CITY ACQUIRE DRAGON AIRWAYS TN these pages last August we recorded that the small British•*- independent operator Dragon Airways was to operate Hunting- Clan's northern network based on Newcastle. This followed aprevious move whereby Dragon had been taken over by Hunting- Clan, with the Elder Dempster Line and the Tyne Tees ShippingCo. as equal partners. That all was not well with Dragon became apparent last winter, when operations from Newcastle ceased. A surprise announcement from the British Aviation ServicesGroup (the parent company of Silver City Airways, Air Kruise, Britavia, Manx Airlines, and the Lancashire Aircraft Corporation)now states that the B.A.S. Group "has concluded an agreement to purchase Dragon Airways, a privately owned airline with a net-work of routes linking Newcastle with Norway, Holland, Germany and Northern Ireland ... It is the intention to integrate theservices previously operated by Dragon Airways with the northern division of our member company, Silver City Airways, Ltd." The name Dragon will now disappear from the British airtransport scene, and the company will henceforth be known as Silver City (Northern) Aviation, Ltd., with a new board of direc-tors comprising initially Mr. Eoin C. Mekie as chairman and A. Cdre. G. J. Powell as managing director. Dragon's two Heronswill continue in service. This is the third B.A.S. purchase of British northern indepen-dent airlines to have taken place in the last six months. The others were Manx Airlines (September 1956) and Lancashire Air-craft Corporation (December 1956). The most interesting aspect of the latest move is the creation of a northern division of SilverCity: this may well augur wider extension of the famous name. A replica of the Rolls- Royce Tyne is here seen installed in the star- board inner nacelle of the Vanguard mock- up at Weybridge. Looking on is (lower left) Mr. E. S. All- wright, the Vickers engineer responsible; with him are his col- leagues Mr. J. Hird and Mr. E. I. Davis. (Below) More evidence of the way Convair are getting down to detail with the 880 is provided by this group of T.W.A. and Delta executives studying, with the aid of models, the medium jet's ter- minal characteristics. DUTCH TRAFFIC RIGHTS IN THE U.S.A. '"THERE was sharp disagreement last year between the Dutch-1- and the Americans over new traffic rights proposed by Holland for K.L.M. in the U.S.A. (see Flight, October 5, 1956). Newnegotiations were opened in Washington on March 19; and although there is as yet no indication of their outcome, it seemsalmost certain that—despite the objections of PanAm and other U.S. carriers—K.L.M. will be granted traffic rights to operatefrom New York to Curacao in the Dutch West Indies, together with an extension of the Amsterdam-Montreal route to either LosAngeles or Houston, and so on to Mexico. ANTONOV'S UKRAINA CJINCE 1952 the design bureau of the Russian designer Oleg K.^ Antonov at Kiev has been engaged principally in the design of large turboprop freight and passenger aircraft. The first suchproject to be built—the AN-8 (or AN-4 in the Russian Air Force) described in our issue of August 3 last—was a high-wing machineweighing up to 88,000 lb, powered by a pair of 5,100 h.p. engines. It first flew early in 1955 and is now in production as a multi-purpose civil and military machine. Illustrated for the first time (p. 397) is the larger civil AN-10bearing the name Ukraina. It is powered by four 4,000 e.h.p. engines "which," say the Russians, "are more economical than theengines of the Viscount"—a claim that emphasizes the Soviet Union's serious efforts towards achieving commercial sales. The AN-10 adheres to the high-wing layout, and makes a mostinstructive comparison with the still-born Vickers-Armstrongs V.870—the "might-have-been" Vanguard which was almost builtfor B.E.A. (sketch, Flight for December 9, 1955, p. 862). Like the V.870, the AN-10, in its civil passenger form at least, has acapacious fuselage of circular section. This gives great floor- width, and the aircraft must easily accommodate its announcedload of 70 to 80 passengers on Aeroflot routes. In addition there should be ample room for stowage under the floor, notwithstand-ing the accommodation of the main bogies, and most of the accessory systems components, in the mid-section. Following typical Russian practice, the front end has a trans-parent nose for the navigator, with a radar scanner under the floor and a broad cockpit immediately aft. The whole interior ispressurized, and the peak operating height on a long stage is given as 10,000m, or over 32,000ft. At the rear end is a main door onboth sides and a retractable tail bumper below, to protect the unusual ventral fin. The floor slopes upwards towards the tail. Each engine is an axial turboprop, of some 40in cowled diameter,driving a single-rotation 15ft propeller. The intakes are of the direct annular pattern, the jet-pipes exhaust straight out underthe wing, and the oil coolers are mounted in large ducts on the underside of the nacelles. The AN-10 can, it is stated, take offon any three engines and fly on any two. According to Red Star, the Army newspaper, the type cruisesat 370 m.p.h. (This compares with the 412 m.p.h. of the V.870 weighing 101,000 lb and using four early R.B.109s of 4,000 e.h.p.).The AN-10 must suffer slightly from the great size of its fuselage; yet it is undoubtedly a machine to be watched. Everything thatMr. Antonov has said about it indicates that it will be a formidable aeroplane to match on a cost-per-ton-mile basis, and Aeroflotintend to use it on international routes. In fact, had it not been for a Soviet change of heart, the AN-10 would be seen at theParis Salon in May and would thereafter have visited London. BREVITIES AB.O.A.C. Stratocruiser flew the Prime Minister, Mr. HaroldMacmillan, and the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, to Bermuda on March 19 for their talks with President Eisen-hower. The aircraft refuelled at Gander en route. The party were due to return on Wednesday. * * * Mr. A. R. Bennett, formerly B.O.A.C.'s reservations manager,is to become sales manager U.K. He will concentrate on day- to-day administration to free Mr. M. D. Morrissey, regional salesmanager U.K. and Europe, for policy planning. The new head office reservations manager will be Mr. R. J. Walden. * * * A reduction in rates from £25 to £17 per ton for consignmentsin excess of four tons has been announced by Silver City Airways on their "Roadair" services between London and Paris. The timefor bulk cargoes between the two cities has been reduced from 72 hours to 48 hours. * * * Transcontinental, the new Argentine Convair 880 operator-to-be, has been authorized to operate from Buenos Aires to Monte- video, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, New York, Lima,Bogota, and San Francisco. Routes to the Far East are also envisaged.
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