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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0814.PDF
830 FLIGHT CIVIL AVIATION . . . services within Ghana have in the past been flown by W.A.A.C.After many months of hesitation, in which K.L.M. have frequently been mentioned, the Ghanaians have decided to form their ownairline, Ghana Airways, in association with B.O.A.C. Under a long-term agreement, the British Corporation will assist in thedevelopment of this new carrier. Local services will be taken over from W.A.A.C., while the Accra - London route willinitially be operated with Stratocruisers on charter from B.O.A.C. As in the Nigerian proposal, official and commercial capital willcome together, Ghana Airways capital being subscribed 60 per cent by the Government and 40 per cent by B.O.A.C. TRANSAIR'S NEW BASE '"THE first airline to adopt the new airport at Gatwick as its base•*• is Transair, the independent operator of three Viscount 804s and 11 DC-3s. The airline's base at Croydon, occupied sinceTransair's inception in 1947, has been close'd down and replaced by a brand new £250,000 administration and maintenance facility.Unlike most independents' bases—with the notable exception of Silver City's Ferryfield—this one displays the enviable advantagesof having been planned from the start as a place of airline business. It was designed by Clive Pascall and Peter Watson of London, andwas built by McAlpine. The site chosen is roughly an equal taxying distance to theterminal area and to the runway. [It was probably no accident, too, that the building is prominently noticeable from the London -Brighton road and the adjoining railway.] The new office building houses all the administrative personnel,and the adjoining hangar—which accommodates two or three aircraft at a time (depending on whether they are Viscounts orDC-3s)—houses the engineering staff. The various engineering offices (hydraulics, electrics, stores, etc.) are clearly placarded,and lead direct! v off the floor of the hangar. Total Transair staff is now about 400. An innovation (described in Straight and Level on page 825),is the Viscount maintenance "dock"—which is not a dock at all, but a hydraulically operated system of retracting pits under eachwheel. A picture appears on the previous page. Transair's Viscount maintenance was, until the move toGatwick, carried out by B.E.A. at London Airport, with Transair's Viscount engineers (16 of whom are now checked out on theaircraft) looking on. Transair are appreciative of the help given to them by B.E.A., and can no doubt be of return help pending thetime when B.E.A. have their own facilities built at Gatwick. (A site alongside Transair's base, separated from it by a massive earthblast-wall and marked by a "Fly B.E.A." board, has been reserved for the Corporation.) Transair's Viscount engineers have developed, with A.R.B.approval, their own maintenance schedule. It is of the pictorial kind, as pioneered for the 700 by Field Aircraft Services. Transair seem to be getting good utilization out of their fleet:having recently added a third Viscount 804, it might have been expected that some DC-3s would have been disposed of. In fact,one more DC-3, making 11 in all, has just been acquired from the R.A.F. Each Viscount is utilized at a rate which is approaching anannual 2,500 hr. About a half of these hours are on trooping (to Gibraltar, Malta and Idris), and the rest on inclusive-tour summerholiday services (five a week) to Gibraltar, Tangiers, Toulouse, Palma and Nice. In addition, though this is not widely known,Transair have a contract with Air France to operate daily Viscount The scene inside Gatwick's new terminal on the day of iis Royal inauguration, June 9, 1958. Celebrating the inauguration of Continental Air Lines' Viscount services between Chicago, Kansas City, Denver and Los Angeles are seen (from I. to r.) Mr. Norman C. Geiger, Continental's Los Angeles sales manager; Ethel Merman, wife of Mr. Bob Six, Continental's president; Capt. R. Rymer, senior Vickers experimental test pilot; and Mr. Christopher Clarkson, Vickers' U.S. representative. The picture was taken in Los Angeles. flights between London, Paris and Nice. Air France cabin staff are carried, and the contract extends from May to October, 1958. The airline's DC-3s achieve about 2,000 hr a year each, and areused for daily newspaper deliveries to the Continent; internal ser- vices in Germany; inclusive-tours (to Alghero, Perpignan, Pisa,Minorca, Lourdes); general charter and freighting; and Trans- air's one normal scheduled service—from Gatwick to Jersey.This operates from June until September, with one flight on Fridays and six on Saturdays. Transair now have 68 pilots: 23 DC-3 captains and 23 firstofficers, and 22 Viscount captains and first officers. The main impression gained from a recent Flight visit toTransair's new Gatwick base is that new quarters—especially when they have been planned and paid for by yourself—providesomething more than better working conditions. They do some- thing to enhance morale too, however good this may have beenin the past. HANDS ACROSS THE HIMALAYAS IN New Delhi on June 2 a bilateral air agreement for a Moscow -Delhi air service was signed between Russia and India. The signatories were Marshal P. Zhigarev for the U.S.S.R., andMr. M. M. Philip, secretary of the Ministry of Communications of the Government of India. The agreement came into forceimmediately. The specified route is Delhi - Amritsar - Tashkent - Moscow, but Aeroflot and Air-India may overfly the intermediateairfields at their discretion. Initially, Aeroflot are authorized to carry international passengers, cargo and mail to and fromAmritsar and Delhi, and Air-India to and from Tashkent and Moscow. Aeroflot's Tu-104s, which will serve this route, will show a bigadvantage in speed over Air-India's Super Constellations. The Tu-104 service is scheduled to take 8J hr and the L.1049G threeor four hours longer. Each airline will operate at an initial fre- quency of one service per week and will offer first- or tourist-classseats. It was agreed also that each party would bear its own expensesin operating the service, but the revenue would be paid into a common pool. At the end of each calendar month the fund willbe apportioned on a basis of the number of scheduled and non- scheduled services operated by each airline during the month. ELECTRONIC CUSTOMER-SERVICE IN our issue of June 6 we discussed the background to the recentmeeting of 33 Viscount operators at Vickers-Armstrongs' Weybridge works—a demonstration of after-sales service in itsmost advanced form. At the other end of the scale of customer- service is pre-sales technical effort; at Weybridge this is largely theresponsibility of the civil aircraft development group, an organiza- tion which can fairly claim to be the most experienced and effectiveof its kind outside the U.S.A. Even if it were Vickers' sales policy to deal merely withcustomers' inquiries, which it is not, the volume of work involved would be considerable. The variety of Viscounts and Vanguardsbeing marketed is wide, and the demand from operators wanting to know how these aircraft match up to their particular require-
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