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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0125.PDF
FLIGHT, 24 January 1958 127 A Qantas Super Constellation lands at London Airport on January 16, having flown via the Middle East to complete the westbound section of Q.E.A.'s inaugural round-world service in both directions. PROGRESS ON THE BALTIC OROKERS on the Air Section of the Baltic Exchange are happily-*-* looking back over the results of 1957. Despite a slackening in the later months of the year, the overall level of activity was claimedto be exceptional. Unlike airlines, brokers tend to measure activity in terms ofvalue rather than volume, the former index taking account not only of the volume of traffic but also of the prevailing rates.Although in the immediate post-war period the bulk of the Baltic's air business was air freight—hence the Air Section being originallyentitled "the Air Freight Exchange"—in recent years passenger traffic has been predominant. This change is apparently explainedby the meteoric growth of inclusive-tour charter, and also by an increasing recognition among shipowners of the advantages oftransporting ships' crews by air. Although there has been a ten- dency for more inclusive-tour contracts to be negotiated directlybetween airline and travel agent, by-passing the broker, the demand to negotiate the carriage of ships' crews has been steadily on theincrease. To some degree this reflects the general condition of the shipping industry. When business is slack the need for rapid crewtransportation is less, hence the reduction in air charter business last autumn when demand for shipping space sagged. But thegeneral trend is that ship-owners are becoming increasingly aware of the real economies to be gained from what is superficially anexpensive form of transport. Furthermore, as a recruiting device, shipowners find that air travel is a valuable inducement to pros-pective crew. The main charter market for passengers other than ships' crewshas been in the past for North Atlantic tourists, but British inde- pendent companies have always been handicapped in this field bythe superior aircraft and stronger sales position of American and Canadian carriers. (The introduction of economy-class fares willaffect this section of the charter market severely.) A large number of inquiries for passenger charter flights have to be turned awayin the absence of the return loads necessary if attractive rates are to be quoted. This problem does not arise when time spent by theaircraft at the terminal airport is relatively short. For this reason functions such as sports meetings continue to provide useful busi-ness to the charter market. Freight charters showed a heavy increase in 1957. While muchof this is represented by emergency shipments such as ships' pro- pellers or aircraft engines, an increasingly wide range of com-modities are appearing in the charter contracts drawn up in the Baltic Exchange. Rates of carriage are as dependent on availability of suitableaircraft as on demand for space. In recent years rates have remained fairly steady, for although there has been little increasein the number of aircraft available, improved utilization has per- mitted airlines to satisfy a growing demand. This position changedin 1957 with the acquisition by the independents of additional aircraft, and with B.O.A.C.'s reappearance on the charter market.Until the Corporation disposes of its Constellation and Argonaut fleets, fear that B.O.A.C. is quoting "sub-economic" rates willcontinue to cause some trepidation among the British independents. This tendency towards lower rates will result in an even heaviervolume of charter traffic in 1958. Widespread disposal of piston aircraft by scheduled airlines in the next few years will probablyensure that this trend continues. Brokers also believe that the easing of statutory restrictions on freight flights—particularly therule that an aircraft must not be chartered to more than one customer at a time—would not only greatly increase the chartermarket, but would have little adverse effect on scheduled carriers. SELLING THE FREIGHTERCOACH AN Armstrong Whitworth Aircraft sales team, consisting of Mr.^ C. S. Emery (sales director), Mr. D. A. Woodley (assistant chief designer) and Mr. A. H. Stratford (civil aircraft adviser) are visiting New Zealand to discuss with operators the AW.650. The managing director of A.W.A., Mr. H. M. Woodhams, has expressed encouragement at the interest taken in the project by foreign operators and reconfirmed hopes that the first prototype will fly before the end of the year. The same sales team will later visit South America and the Far East for talks with other interested operators. RECORD B.E.A. PROFITS T>RELIMINARY unaudited estimates reveal that B.E.A. has•*• achieved a record net profit of £1.2m after meeting financial charges in the calendar year 1957.The gratifying rise in last year's profit over 1956 is mainly attri- buted to an improvement in revenue, for inflation has preventedrigorous control of expenditure from being expressed in a fall in the level of operating costs. Probably the most important factorin this improvement is an increase in the proportion of space sold from 63.6 to 64.6 per cent. This was accompanied by higherrevenue rates, primarily because the fastest growth has been experienced by the more lucrative classes of traffic (passenger-milesincreased by 16.5 per cent, freight ton-miles by only 10.3 per cent), partly because some fares were increased early in the year. CAPT. A. C. MORGAN regret to record that Capt. A. C. Morgan, D.F.C., chiefpilot and technical manager of Irish Air Charter, Ltd., was killed on the night of January 15, when the Piper Apache he wasflying fell into the Shannon Estuary near Waller Island shortly after taking off from Shannon airport en route for Dublin. Aninquiry into the accident will be held by the Department of Industry and Commerce. A. C. ("Monkey") Morgan, who was born in Wales in 1920, waseducated at Wellington College, Berkshire, and commissioned in the Royal Artillery. He flew A.O.P. aircraft on the Central Medi-terranean and West European fronts, and was awarded the D.F.C. for his gallantry on operations. After the war, Capt. Morganoperated his own Auster on aerial photography and air charter business from Weston airfield, County Kildare. Last spring heflew the Atlantic from Lock Haven to Dublin after taking delivery of the first Piper Apache for Irish Air Charter from the manu-facturers, and was to fly a second aircraft to Ireland next month. Well known on both sides of the Irish Sea, his genial personalityand enthusiasm will be much missed. NEW HOPE FOR COLLISION WARNING AT a meeting of the Air Transport Association in Los Angeles• earlier this month, Minneapolis-Honeywell and the Federal Telecommunication Laboratories put forward new schemes forcollision warning devices. Aerojet-General, also engaged on proximity warning indication, postponed a demonstration becauseof installation problems. The Honeywell company favour a co-operative system (warningbetween equipped aircraft) of infra-red detection with a beacon and a scanner. The beacon would be designed to flash on and offat a frequency matched to the aircraft's magnetic heading. The scanning aircraft would then be able to detect any aircraft, regard-less of position, in time to give 20 sec warning or, if no beacon were carried, detection of 20 sec would be limited to certainconditions and positions. The co-operative system would have the additional advantage of being able to differentiate collisioncourses. The Federal proposal, employing interferometry techniques, islimited to coverage in the forward quadrant. Their suggestion is to use weather radar with four additional small antennae to measurethe relative phase of echo energy reflected from the detected air- craft. A display tube with a "command" arrow to show thedirection to steer and an arrow length to show the magnitude of collision threat would be used. AS OTHERSISEEJUS . . . THE Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association is the militantchampion of private and business aircraft flying in America. Writing in the January newsletter, the vice-president of the Asso-ciation has this to say about Chicago Midway's record number of 408,059 aircraft movements last year: "That's an average of 46.6movements per hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Interesting sidelight: the Chicago total is 3.2 times that of London airport(busiest airport outside U.S. or possessions), yet British delegates in I.C.A.O. continually push for extreme rigid controls on all flyingthroughout the world comparable to the stifling regulations in effect in Britain for safety reasons. Result: there's virtually nocivil aviation in Britain other than commercial airlines."
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