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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 1094.PDF
184 FLIGHT, 9 August 1957 Aircrews relax over a game of chess in the Aeroflot hostel at Tashkent. Strict off-duty regulations apply to all crews—for example, no alcohol for 24 hours before flight. AEROFLOT . . . Bank but, in fact, it made a surplus. This surplus ran into "millionsof roubles" in 1956 and was of the order of 9.2 per cent for the passenger, mail and cargo business (i.e., income exceeded expendi-ture by that percentage). But it was "much less" if the agricultural activities were taken into account. After further questioning itbecame clear that this "surplus" was unplanned. It represented the amount by which costs were reduced below the target esti-mates. This sum of money will now be applied to the reduction of fares in 1957-58. It is Aeroflot's fixed policy to bring them downas soon as possible to train-fare (plus sleeper where applicable). It was emphasized that the yearly budgets only plan to breakeven. They are never constructed so as to show a surplus. There are several reasons why this is possible: — (1) Aeroflot has no interest charges.(2) Aircraft are ordered in large numbers—"at least 25 at a time" I was told. And each successive batch price is cheaper thanthe last as the aircraft factories are also not budgeting for a profit. (3) New types are always delivered in a completely developedcondition. This is a responsibility placed upon the manufacturer who has to absorb all such charges. They are, of course, assisted asin other countries by military experience and development work. While power inside the national airline structure is delegatedin many instances to the Boards in the republics, considerable personal authority attaches to individual local managers. The keyposition is that of "fleet manager." This post is always held by a pilot. Its holder manages the group of (say) four "squadrons,"of nine Ilyushins each, based at a particular airport. But he is also the airport commandant and responsible for all airline groundservices including line engineering maintenance. The "squadron" managers report to him. In addition to these administrative duties he is required to doa certain minimum of active flying in command of an aircraft. When he is no longer able to do that he is ineligible to continuein his post and is replaced by another active pilot. He is then given the appropriate accrued pension and offered another job inthe industry. The authority of the "fleet manager" does not extend to anyoverhaul on his airfield: this is run by an engineering superin- tendent, usually responsible to the functional engineering memberof the Territorial Board. Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, however, departs completely from the standard managerial pattern. It hasan airport commandant who is responsible only for ground ser- vices and as its line-maintenance team deals exclusively withTu-104s (there is no overhaul base for thw aircraft yet) it is treated as an individual unit under the jurisdiction of the Moscow RegionTerritorial Board. All these Boards print their own local timetables (none of whichhas yet been issued internationally) in their own languages. Their structure is duplicated by the Union Territorial Committees,which seem to match them in power and certainly share their responsibilities. Much of the work of these Boards has obviouslybeen bound up with planning for the introduction of new aircraft types. The Ukraina is due to be brought into service soon. Four havealready been delivered and are doing crew training. Flight simu- lators do not yet exist for this or any other type. The Ukraina "will be invaluable for carrying out the Government's plans fordeveloping the virgin lands," they said. Special mention was made of its minus-700 yd grass field take-off, a characteristic which"will obviate the need for us to make costly roads there which are impassable in the winter when our need to geL technicians in andmaterials out is just as great." Obviously the planned date of autumn 1957 for general Ukrainaintroduction is going to be difficult to meet. But 1958 will see it displacing the unpressurized piston-engined types on such routesas 8 hr 50 min journey from Sochi-Adler on the Black Sea to Leningrad,during which the 11-14 has wearily to land atKrasnodar,Stalino, Kiev and Minsk. After the Ukraina will come the 11-18 Moskva and the Tu-110.These are intended to fly, first of all, on the routes from Moscow to Prague, Tbilisi, Tashkent and Sverdlovsk. This is bound totake a great deal of time to implement. Our request to inspect the latest fleet additions was met with the frank reply "Thedesigners won't allow it yet. They are still under considerable development."The problems of training engineering personnel are clearly of the greatest magnitude and are receiving top priority attention.Aeroflot maintains its own academic institutions for producing personnel educated to a prescribed standard. At Kiev they havethe Voroshilov Civil Aviation College, which has a five-and-a-half- year course for preparing engineers up to degree or diplomastandards. This college, founded in 1931, was damaged during the war. It is now undergoing great expansion. The 1957 intakeof students was 160; in 1958 250 will be enrolled. The principal, Nicholaievitch Galega (a Candidate of Technical Science), toldme "We are still very short of technicians—particularly for our Siberian lines. If we had had the residential accommodation wewould have expanded our intake this year. But due to bombing we still have to use the pre-war dormitory as our central building." The College is divided into two distinct sections. One is devotedto residential students. The other conducts correspondence courses with students situated all over the Soviet Union. While the full-time section has an age limit of 35 years the correspondence courses are open to suitable persons of all ages. There are 1,650persons approaching their examinations in this way who are "nursed" at "local points of consultation" by teachers from dis-trict "Institutes of Higher Education," assisted by visiting pro- fessors from the College. These local centres now exist atKabarovsk, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Tashkent, Yakutsk, Tbilisi, Rostov and Moscow. At each of them a Kiev College man is incharge and he arranges for suitable pupils to go to Kiev, write their theses and sit an appropriate examination. They are per-mitted to stay there for six months; during this period, the College pays them their average wages.The residential students are not all Russians. They come from all over the Soviet Union; some, too, are from Hungary, EasternGermany, China, North Korea and other associated states. They are particularly trained to take such jobs as supervisors, technicalcontrollers (i.e., inspectors) and shift leaders. The curriculum is thorough. As well as their classroom and lab work they have thisto undertake: 1st year, introduction and theory; 2nd year, prac- tical training in the special College workshops; 3rd year, visits to,and work in, aircraft manufacturing plants; 4th year, specialized work at airports; 5th year, study of general maintenance methodsand organization prior to preparation of a thesis on some aspects of engineering maintenance.The students sleep six to a room, but have few complaints; for there are now 20 applicants for each place and those coming directfrom school have to possess an "excellence" certificate before they are permitted to sit the College entrance examination. All placesare rilled by open competition, but Aeroflot employees have some preference. At an average age of 23 years these fill 60 per cent ofthe places—but they get in only after ten days of examinations (although they are given a month's leave with pay to prepare andsit for them). The other 40 per cent come from school-leavers aged 17-18years. It was denied that "quotas" were taken from each National Republic; but each was represented.After their 5^-year course (which compares with the 4 years 8 months in an ordinary university, and is the longest in theU.S.S.R.) they confront a State Diploma Commission, which awards academic honours. Part of this is in open session, whenthey address the Commission in front of their fellow students. If passed out they are then absorbed into Aeroflot or return totheir national airlines. The present principal graduated from Kiev in 1938, workedhis way up to superintendent and finally returned to run the College. He was responsible, on the way, for the design ofIlyushin maintenance-base facilities at Kiev, with the assistance of the scientific research section of the College. Like the students,he wore the blue double-breasted Aeroflot uniform. In his posi- tion he occupied the 13th salary category in the national structure(this runs from 1 to 15; the 15th is occupied by the head of the organization, Zhigarev, and the 14th by the first deputy head.)This was the same, for example, as the head of the Ukrainian
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