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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0370.PDF
386 FLIGHT WHO BELIEVES IN HELICOPTERS?. . . The striking blue, grey, white and red livery designed tor New York Airway* Vertol H-44s. The "rocket red" is in Day-Glo fluorescent paint, intended to make the aircraft easily visible to the pilots of others. 1965, bringing in over $9 million revenue and enabling them todispense with a subsidy. It is interesting to conjecture what the results would be if 48-seat Rotodynes were substituted for thesmaller, slower and less economical "Ship X." If 2| million passengers a year in one city sounds fantastic, it iswell to remember that studies conducted by the Port of New York Authority and other competent organizations have put the antici-pated helicopter traffic even higher. In fact, the U.S. Aircraft Industries Association has predicted an "almost explosive" growthin traffic between 1961 and 1965, to the extent that it expects some 30 million civil helicopter landings and take-offs by that year.By comparison, there was a total of 20,384,000 landings and take-offs by civil and military aircraft at all airports with C.A.A.control towers in 1956. It is anticipated that ten million of the helicopter landings and take-offs will be made by commercialoperators, which exceeds U.S. domestic air carrier operations in 1956 by 50 per cent. This estimate is based on the anticipated useof 800 transport helicopters, which would be equivalent numeric- ally to the U.S. domestic fixed-wing airline fleet in 1947. The other 20 million landings and take-offs would be contri-buted by non-scheduled carriers, business helicopters and opera- tions that come under the category of "general aviation," andwhich are expected to account for 25-30 per cent of future helicopter sales. This must also seem terribly optimistic to anyoneliving in the United Kingdom, sans scheduled helicopter services, sans helicopter-minded businessmen (except for a few pioneerslike Richard Fairey) and sans much initiative or encouragement from Government, industry or manufacturers. But again it isworth while turning our eyes westward, for there were 65 heli- copters engaged solely on business flying in America a year ago,and since then one or two bright operators have been cashing in on the vast untapped potential of this market. Typical is Helicopter Air Lift of Chicago, whose founder, HalConners, decided in the autumn of 1955 that there must be several senior executives in the city's 6,000-odd industries whowould be willing to pay a reasonable annual fee for the con- venience of having a helicopter permanently at their disposal forbusiness trips. He was so persuasive that four leading eompanies —Motorola, Shell Oil, Texas-Illinois Natural Gas and UnionTank—soon agreed to use 200 hours of helicopter taxi service apiece each year. This enabled him to buy a three-seat Bell 47at $35,000 and to be assured of an annual profit from operating it. Then the idea snowballed. In a few months he had four 47s,to which he has since added a four-seat 47J, and his list of subscribers now reads like a directory of Chicago's top industry. Customers can buy as little as 25 hours' flying at $75 an hour.The rate drops to $65 for 100 hours and even less for larger users. Nor is such a service practicable only in places with properheliports, for H.A.L. helicopters operate regularly into 60 factory and office landing sites in Chicago, where it has been found thatalmost any roof strong enough to bear the sort of snowfall the city gets can also support a Bell 47. This is only one bright idea, and only one way in which thehelicopter is being used by industry and commerce in America. A single operator in Canada, Okanagan Helicopters, is able tofind charter work for a fleet of 57 helicopters, made up of 36 Bens, Social call: Back garden possibilities of the Gyrodyne XRON-1. 20 S-55s and one S-58, on work ranging from geological survey-ing and power line patrol to "flying crane" operations into sites perched frighteningly on mountain ledges. A U.S. operator,flying for the oil industry, carried some 150,000 people between off-shore drilling rigs and shore installations last year. In thisrespect, the variety of work that has been undertaken by heli- copters is well known. Almost every one could be developed fromdabbling to dividends by an operator with imagination. What is the potential for the future? It is impossible to say; butthe U.S. oil industry alone operates well over 1,700 aircraft at the present time; and the helicopter will do anything that a fixed-wingaeroplane can do, and more besides, except where high airport- to-airport speed is the prime need. To the business and com-mercial market must be added the unknown "personal helicopter" Much work is being done, on both sides of the Atlantic, in the develop- ment of helicopter flight simulators. This is Short Brothers' new equip- ment, with dual-control cockpit (at left) and, below it, a horizon projector. Another projector, above the cockpit, gives the seascape. market that may await a cheap, easy-to-fly machine like the Rotor-Craft Sky Hook, or a mass-produced tip-driven Skeeter, or a development of the ducted-propeller Piasecki 59X, which is onlya different kind of helicopter. These are markets that will endure even if the armed Servicesand airlines progress one day to some other form of VTOL or STOL design such as the tilt-wing aircraft, because there areliterally millions of potential customers for a cheap, safe, easy-to- fly "family car of the air." Perhaps they are best typified by an87-year-old Belgian harness-maker named Fleune DeCroupet, whose simple, moving little story was told in a recent issue of theUnited Aircraft Corporation's magazine, Bee-Hive. It seems that last summer a relative presented DeCroupet withthe winnings of a lottery so that the old man could fulfil a lifelong wish to see the Cathedral of Cologne. There, generations ago,a member of his family had been honoured for service to his church. Shortly after he took off from Liege in a Sabena S-58,DeCroupet's eyes lit with excitement. He sat silently, seemingly transfixed by his novel experience. Fifty-one minutes after take-off the helicopter was over Cologne. As the old man looked down on the twin spires of the beautiful Cathedral almost at his finger-tips, his eyes filled with tears and he spoke for the first time during the flight. In deep, resonant tones, he said: "Void comment Dieu writ." (This is how God sees.)
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