FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0783.PDF
FIRST AERONAUTICAL WEEKLY IN THE WORLD FOUNDED 1909 ~ and AIRCRAFT ENGINEER No 2525 Vol 71 FRIDAY 14 JUNE 1957 Editor MAURICE A. SMITH D.F.C. and BAR Associate Editor H. F. KING M.B.E. Technical Editor W. T. GUNSTON Production Editor ROY CASEY Iliffe and Sons Ltd Dorset House Stamford Street London, S.E.1 Telephone • Waterloo 3333 (60 lines) BRANCH OFFICES - Coventry 8-10 Corporation Street Telephone • Coventry 5210 Birmingham 2 King Edward House, New Street Telephone • Midland 7191 (7 lines) Manchester 3 260 Deansgate Telephone • Blackfriars 4412 (3 lines) Deansgate 3595 (2 lines) Glasgow C.2 26B Renfield Street Telephone • Central 1265 (2 lines) Toronto 1, Ontario Thomas Skinner of Canada, Ltd. 67 Yonge Street Telephone • Empire 6-0873 New York 6, N.Y. Thomas Skinner and Co. (Publishers), Ltd. Ill Broadway Telephone • Digby 9-1197 SUBSCRIPTION RATES Home and Overseas • Twelve Months. £4 10s. US.A. and Canada $14.00 tn this issue 792 Atar Volant 794 Christmas Island 795 Cosmopolitan Quartet 799 The Giant At Hartford 800 Riding the Jetstream 802 Fidase 806 London Season 808 Helicopter Enterprise 809 Accuracy and Commonsense 810 Slow Roll 812 The Stratocruisers Carry On Clearing SkiesS UDDENLY, the sun seems to be peeping out from behind the cloud that has been hanging over British air transport. Of late the scene has been more in shadow than in light, or so it has seemed to a nation whose strength is self-criticism, and whose weakness—if it is a weakness—is self-esteem. We may be mistaken: the wind may change or other clouds gather. But we might just allow ourselves to lean momentarily on our spades and review with a calm eye a scene which, though not all sweetness and light, does appear more cheery. In doing so, we recognize the dangers of over-simplification, of taking too rigid a view of "the future pattern," which—as in other departments of human activity— is woven as much by chance as by man-decreed acts. Supposing the U.S.A.F. had not wanted big jet tankers? There might have been no talk today of the "600 m.p.h. jet transport plateau." But we do not think that the tribunal of history will adjudge us wrong if we submit that the most significant development in British air transport since the Comet is B.O.A.C.'s order for the VC-10 medium-jet, the joint private venture of the Vickers-Armstrongs and Rolls-Royce team. The dizzy sequence of political posturings, about-turns and somersaults which have characterized B.O.A.C.'s equipment policy for two years past seems ended at last, and suddenly everyone can stop arguing about what the Corporation should or should not buy. —and Broadening Horizons In the VC-10 we see many lessons of the past applied. Take the size of the order: 35 aircraft. The mind boggles at the capacity this adds to the large fleets of 707s, Britannia 312s and Comet 4s which B.O.A.C. already has on order. It suggests, according to the sums we did last week, that the Corporation is planning on truly prodigious increases in Britain's at-present declining total share of inter- national air transport. And the presence of a strong B.O.A.C. team in South America, an area in which Britain's traffic rights have lain neglected for three years past, suggests that the Corporation means to make good use of every capacity ounce-inch it has on order. The size of the VC-10 contract also portends real clear-the-decks action at Weybridge and Derby. Take the design itself. Few details have been released, but the VC-10 will clearly be the class of aeroplane for which the world's operators are likely to pay out a great deal of money during the next ten years. The big-capacity, medium- range, high-subsonic class of jet will have a distinct place of its own alongside the 707 and DC-8, and this one is timed to appear when the airlines will have recovered their breath from the exertions of introducing the big jets. There are other causes for guarded satisfaction. One is Britain's strength as a supplier of turboprop transports for every major category of transport: long- range Britannia (for which a new export order is announced), medium-range Vanguard, short-range Viscount, freight-carrying A.W.A. 650, local-service Dart Herald, executive Accountant. There is Rolls-Royce's domination of the transport turbine-engine market: Dart and Tyne, Avon and Conway—all chosen to power eight out of the ten new European and American turbine transports on the market. There is, too, real Ministerial awareness of the fact that the country's private airlines must have a bigger share of expanding world traffic, and we hear that promising new recommendations have been laid before Mr. Watkinson by the Air Transport Advisory Council. There are also R.A.F. Transport Command's sharpened responsibilities for giving wings to Britain's mobile strategic reserve, with the attendant implications for the industry's transport order-books. And B.E.A., notwithstanding last week's "embarrassment" with the flag, have done, and are doing, a great deal for the nation's share of air transport and in establishing its products. We have the feeling that B.E.A. are not as allergic to jets as they have professed in the past, which may mean that another marketable airliner —the 600 m.p.h. short-haul jet will be just that—is discernible in the distance. We have preened enough. Now back to the spade.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
