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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0679.PDF
FLIGHT, 24 May 1957 m Another production landmark was passed at Weybridge on May 14 with the delivery to Philip- pine Air Lines of the 200th Viscount. Pictured at the acceptance are (I. to r.) Mr. James Earl, P.A.L.; Captain Leoni des Yap; Miss Rosario Manendez; Ambassador Leon Ma. Guerrero; Mr. T. Gammon, deputy managing director, Vickers; and Luis Dallegos. CIVIL AVIATION TROUBLE AT THE POST "THE successive and disappointing delays-•• which preceded the Britannia 102's entry into service make it particularly hard to faceany hint of development troubles with the 312. Following the delivery setback causedby the national engineering strike (the first 312 was to have been delivered to B.O.A.C.this month) there are reports that the air- craft's range is down on estimates. Although,say Bristol, figures quoted in the daily Press (which alleged that the aircraft is eight percent down on range) err towards over-pessimism, the trans- atlantic flights of the 312 nevertheless appear to indicate thatthe aircraft cannot be put into regular non-stop transatlantic ser- vice without improvements to the Proteus 755's installed specificfuel consumption. The Bristol team have proved before that they can exert anintense effort to overcome late-hour teething troubles, and it seems likely that B.O.A.C. will have a machine (presumably unmodified)with which to start crew-training early in June. The Corporation's July date for the start of transatlantic services will not now berealized; but they could in any case mount only one service a week at that time. El Al are in a similar position. MORE EAGLE VISCOUNTS SUPPLEMENTING their order for Viscount 810s announcedon April 9, Eagle Aviation are also to have two of the earlier 800-series. This brings the number of Viscounts ordered by thisBritish independent airline to five. (Transair, incidentally, also have two Viscounts on order.) The Government's rejection of Airwork's and Hunting-Clan'sViscount programme has evidently not deterred Eagle from their plans to use more modern equipment on their routes. Althoughit is reasonable to assume that approval to operate Viscount services might more easily have been obtained in the winter of 1958-59(when the 810s should be delivered), Eagle hope to receive aircraft against the second order a whole year earlier—in December 1957and January 1958. AN IRISH MAJORITY TVTEXT Monday, May 27, Aer Lingus celebrate their twenty-•L^" first birthday. "Nobody loves a party more than the Irish," our correspondent in Dublin writes, "and Monday will be thestart of a week of events at Dublin airport. The Aer Lingus fly- past will include a D.H.84 Dragon, repainted for the occasion asEI-ABI (the first Aer Lingus aircraft); a DC-3; Viscount 707; and the Viscount 808, EL-AJI Seandn. The second prototype FokkerF.27 Friendship PH-NVF will also take part, as a taste of things to come. There will be a large staff dance for 2,000 in one of thehangars on Friday, May 31. The week will be brought to a close with the annual blessing of the fleet bythe senior chaplain of Aer Lingus." Aer Lingus started operations on May27, 1936, with a D.H. Dragon service from Dublin to Bristol. Today the fleethas expanded to four Viscount 707s, 14 DC-3s and three Viscount 808s (deliveryof which will be completed this year). Five Fokker Friendships are on order forAER LINGUS < 1958. With Irish whimsy, Aer Lingus' clover-leaf insignia has been dressed up for the airline's twenty-first birthday, to be celebrated at Dublin airport on May 27. C.A.A.-B.O.A.C. AGREEMENT 'T'HE much-discussed future of Central African Airways, whose•*• operating losses have caused concern in Southern Rhodesia, has now been decided. B.O.A.C. have entered into a ten-year agree-ment with the airline whereby the Corporation will guarantee C.A.A. a net profit of £1,750,000 over that period in return forthe right to operate C.A.A.'s services between the U.K. and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. B.O.A.C. will "charter"Argonauts to C.A.A., and operate them in Corporation colours and with Corporation crews. Britannias and, it may be presumed,Comet 4s and 707s will be chartered in due course. Viscounts operated by C.A.A. on the Salisbury-London route will be trans-ferred to local and regional services, the operation of which will henceforth—as in the past—be C.A.A.'s chief function. It will be recalled that the Hunting-Clan group of private airand shipping interests were quick to seize the opportunity of approaching C.A.A. when the airline's difficulties first becameevident. Their terms, it appears, were not as acceptable as those of B.O.A.C., which the Southern Rhodesian Government is saidto regard as "financially attractive, definite and limited." The Federal Government will, under the terms of the pact withB.O.A.C., retain control of its national airline; Hunting-Clan's proposal was that they should hold an option on the purchase(said to be for about £2m) of a 55 per cent controlling interest in C.A.A.—the option to last until mid-1960. In the meantimeHunting-Clan would have undertaken to meet a "substantial por- tion" of any losses sustained by C.A.A. during the option period,and would also provide the Federal Government with a £2m long- term loan for general C.A.A. development purposes. The C.A.A.-B.O.A.C. agreement drew fierce protests fromHunting-Clan Air Transport. Mr. M. H. Curtis, managing direc- tor, described the deal as "uncommercial," and spoke of "govern-ment policy which is slowly strangling independents." Certainly, on the face of it, it is difficult to see how B.O.A.C.can make sufficient money out of C.A.A.'s service to London to give C.A.A. a guaranteed profit of £175,000 a year (three timesB.O.A.C.'s total net operating surplus in 1956) for little or no effort on C.A.A.'s part. It is little wonder that B.O.A.C.'s offer waspreferred to Hunting-Clan's. COLLISION-WARNING DEVELOPMENTS DURING a recent Air Transport Association discussion in LosAngeles, it was stated that a self-sufficient, "non-co-operative" collision-warning system for aircraft appeared to be beyond reachfor the present. Bendix, Hughes and Boeing have all given up attempts to produce such a system, but another company, pre-sumably Collins, is still making an exhaustive evaluation in order to find exactly how the land lies. Thus the situation is still approximately as described in Flightfor March 1 (page 289), but some progress has been made in implementing the modified programme then recorded. Infra-redis a new element in the collision-warning field, but one which must remain for some time as an unknown quantity.
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