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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 1442.PDF
532 FLIGHT, 4 October 1957 Britain's Private Viscount Operator TRANSAIR INTRODUCE TURBOPROP TROOPING By J. M. RAMSDEN Illustrated with "Flight" photographs Turboprops and the Rock symbolize the new era in British air trooping movements to overseas bases. LAST Tuesday, October 1, regular trooping moved into the turbopropera when a Viscount 804, one of two newly acquired by the small private British airline Transair, was due to begin flights to Gibraltar, Malta andLibya under contract to the Government. This article reviews the background to an event which, in a small way, makes British airtransport history. THERE appear to be two ways in which Britain's private-enterprise airlines can look at life. They can bemoan thattheir business is mere crumbs and sweepings from under B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. tables; or they can accept that the Corpora-tions are an accomplished and immutable fact, and that crumbs can, by hard work and commercial courage, be transformed intobread and butter. One independent company which takes the latter view of lifeis Transair, Ltd. Having last week renewed my acquaintance with them, my impression is that they typify the "damn the difficulties,let's get results" outlook which characterizes most—though not all—sections of British private-enterprise air transport today. Ten years ago Transair were a man-and-boy outfit flying acouple of six-seat Consuls on hand-to-mouth charters. Today they are Britain's first and only private airline to operate Viscounts. Ichoose the words outfit and airline deliberately to show, without resort to historical detail, just how much Transair have progressedin a decade of limited opportunity for the British independents. Trim stewardesses, plushy cabins and shiny new turboprop air-liners are not everything, but they are quite something when they have been earned by ten DC-3s doing Continental news-paper deliveries, seasonal inclusive-tours, and odd charters. If you ask a Transair captain how he feels about having"arrived," as I did during a Viscount proving flight to Gibraltar last week, the reaction is one of humility rather than cockiness."Yes, we're quite pleased with ourselves, but we're feeling our way forward very gently," was the gist of his reply. No Transaircaptain, I gathered, has less than 50 Viscount hours before he carries passengers: thirty-odd landings a day at Wisley, underthe tutelage of Vickers pilots; was "routine stuff," and earlier this year Transair crews accompanied a number of Capital and T.C.A.Viscount delivery flights to North America. Maintenance is done at London pending the opening next spring x>f Transair's new£309,000 base at Gatwick. Vickers, though apparently a little dubious two years ago abouta small DC-3 operator aspiring to Viscounts, have apparently gone out of their way to get Transair off to a smooth start—andnot just in their own interests. Transair people will recount in glowing terms many small ways in which Vickers have been ofextra help to them. When Transair ordered Viscounts two-and-a-half years ago(and new 800-type Viscounts at that) quite a buzz of speculation was noted in air transport circles—among independents, Corpora-tions and ministries. How could this small firm hope to find enough work profitably to utilize two big-capacity Viscounts cost-ing £400,000 apiece, not to mention the cost of training, and all the expense that goes with the introduction of a new aircraft?Many people assumed that Transair had their eyes on the possi- bility of a quick re-sale to a Viscount-hungry foreign airline; andcertainly no one could have doubted that Transair were aware of this possibility when they ordered Viscounts. But when I askedMr. G. H. Freeman about this (he is chairman and founder of Transair, and incidentally chairman of the British IndependentAir Transport Association), his reply was that the last thing he had ever intended to do was to re-sell. Had he then bought theViscounts—as long ago as early 1955—with the trooping possi- bility in mind? The answer was in the affirmative. "I know ofno way in which you can get more than 1,000 hours a year out of seasonal flying," he remarked, "and you can't justify theexpensive purchase of Viscounts just for inclusive tours and seasonal work." A simple sum shows the arithmetical sense ofthis: the four-month holiday season (say 120 days) cannot pro- duce much more than 1,000 hours at eight or nine hours a day—and a Viscount must be worked at least 2,500 hours if it is to pay its way. Obviously, there had to be a bread-and-butter line of business—with perhaps enough work capacity left over for some inclu- sive-tour jam in the season. And of all the bread-and-butterwork which the independents enjoy, thanks to an enlightened Government policy, is the transportation of British Servicemenand their families to and from the British bases and dependencies between the West Mediterranean and the South China Seas. Forexample, Airwork and Skyways troop to Ceylon, Singapore and Hong Kong with Hermes; Air Charter do Cyprus with DC-4s;Eagle provide a regular inter-island Mediterranean trooping service and also serve British West Africa with Vikings; andBritavia serve Aden and Nairobi with Hermes. Until last Tuesday, when their Viscount service to Gibraltarwas due to be inaugurated, Transair had not been in the trooping picture. (For a reason which I have never been able to discover,DC-3 operators have never stood much chance of trooping.) How did Transair, a newcomer to trooping, get into this keenly con-tested business? The simplest answer is that they were able to offer Viscounts; but, as I was to appreciate in the course of con-versation with Service officers who were fellow-guests of Trans- air, the award of a trooping contract involves quite a ritual—asI suppose do all commercial contracts between the Government and private firms. One Air Ministry official summed it all up as"a quest for the best service at the cheapest price, but not just the cheapest service." When someone remarked, with an inex-cusable Americanism, that the troops who will fly in Transair Viscounts will have never had it so good, he agreed: but hepointed out that such an observation did not do justice to the part that the Treasury played in these matters. Indeed, I was togain the impression that the Treasury do not only play a part: they are the judges and final arbiters of what constitutes "thebest service at the cheapest price." The influence of the Treasury powerfully dominates every negotiation. Even without Treasuryinfluence, the tender and quotation procedure would be complex, involving as it does initial agreement on movement-requirementsbetween the three Services, who are in turn answerable to the Air Ministry, the Admiralty and War Office, all three of whommust agree on overall policy in military times which are, to say the least, politically uncertain. With Treasury influence^ asstrong as it is, the complete trooping-contract procedure possibly constitutes the most complex method of obtaining air transportbusiness known to man. Transair's first Viscount 804, G-AOXU, seen at Gibraltar at the end of its first proving flight from London on September 24. The aircraft had been delivered on September 17, followed by Transair's second on September 23. A third Viscount 804 has been ordered.
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