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Aviation History
1958
1958-1- - 0204.PDF
208 FLIGHT, 8 August 1958 The cfe Havilland production plant at Chester appears to be making quick strides with its Comet 4 programme: here is B.O.A.C.'s fifth aircraft, G-APDE, nearing the flight stage. The first Comet 4s will come off the parent production line at Hatfield. CIVIL AVIATION SOLENT ACCIDENT REPORT rT HE report of the Public Inquiry into the Aquila Airways ShortSolent flying-boat accident on November 15, 1957, concludes that the essential cause remains unknown. In the opinion of theCourt the accident resulted from: "The stoppage of the No. 3 engine at a time when the No. 4 engine was stopped. The cause ofthe stoppage of the No. 4 engine is unknown. The cause of the stoppage of the No. 3 engine was either an electrical failure in thefuel cut-off actuator circuit or the accidental operation of the cut- off switch." The circumstances of the accident were that the aircraft,G-AKNU, took off from Southampton Water bound for Lisbon en route for Madeira with 50 passengers and a crew of eight. Itmade a normal climb and, three minutes later, passed a routine departure message to Southern Air Traffic Control Centre, Lon-don. At 2254 hours, however, the radio officer called the Aquila base at Southampton and transmitted this message: "No. 4 enginefeathered. Coming back in a hurry." Approximately one minute later the aircraft crashed into the face of a quarry between Chesseland Brook in the Isle of Wight. The wreckage caught fire and, despite the efforts of a number of people who quickly came to thescene, none of the crew and only fifteen of the passengers survived. The possible operation of No. 3 cut-off actuator could havebeen effected in a number of ways, "none of them proved, all of them unlikely." But the theories put forward about the possibleoperation of this switch involved an error by the First Officer, and the Commissioner says: "Justice would not be done to the lateMr. Scarr unless I emphasized that there is no evidence at all of any error on his part." WRIGHT TURBO-COMPOUND CRITICISMS SOME operators have experienced considerable trouble withWright 988TC Turbo-Compound engines in service and the incidence of unscheduled featherings and engine-changes has beenhigh. Others have had relatively little trouble. Resulting differ- ences of opinion between Wright and some of the operators cameto a head recently when the Italian journal Settimana Alata wrote that the certificate of airworthiness for the engine should bereviewed because of an unsatisfactory reliability record; and a translation of the article was forwarded by Alitalia to Wright. Aparticular instance cited was the crash of the Sabena DC-7C at Casablanca in May, in which the failure of a second engine was at first stated to be the cause. It was subsequently established that,although failure of one engine was responsible for the attempted emergency landing at Casablanca, the actual accident was causedby pilot error. While recording this, Settitnana Alata stuck to its original contention that the 988TC engine was not as reliable as itshould be and claimed that Wright were not doing all they might to remedy the situation.Wright responded that modifications took time and required full testing. Many of the failures, they stated, were in any case causedby improper operation of the engines; and some operators were irked by having to incorporate expensive modifications designed tocure faults they had not themselves experienced to any extent. One result of the whole controversy is that C.A.A. is issuing anairworthiness directive for covering the more important modifica- tions; and the airlines some time ago formed an information poolon remedies for Turbo-Compound snags. Some action is there- fore being taken, but the position of the engine is not seriouslythreatened. The moral of all this is not that the Turbo-Compound is a nestof worms (current American idiom for troublesome equipment), but that British engines—in particular the Proteus—tend to getmore than their fair share of adverse publicity. Engines do give trouble; but the fact that the Proteus 705, after 18 months of ser-vice, is now cleared for a 1,600 hr overhaul life suggests that it gives less trouble than the rather less powerful Turbo-Compound.The American engine, which has been operating for three years, has an overhaul life of 1,250 hr in B.O.A.C. (DC-7C) service, hav-ing started with the Corporation at 850 hr in January 1957. E.D.P. IN ACTION "TVELEGATES to the recent I.A.T.A. technical conference in"•-' London on production planning devoted much of their week to discussing the scope for electronic data processing. Details have since been published on K.L.M.'s use of anI.B.M. 650 computer at the I.B.M. Data Processing Centre in Amsterdam. The computer has undertaken the calculation offlight plans for the 140 European routes operated by Viscounts and Convairs. In the past K.L.M., in their own words, indulged in"the traditional ritual of pre-flight planning undertaken by the pilot and navigator" whereby crew were provided with cruisingtables and fuel consumption graphs, and had to calculate course and altitude according to the latest meteorological reports. Notonly was this a time-consuming process but the margins of error were such that available payload was not always calculated withsufficient certainty. K.L.M. first tried to tackle this problem by hand. But thecalculation of plans for 36 routes took three months, by which time aircraft performance and route characteristics were sufficientlychanged to render the plans out of date. The electronic flight plans assume a choice of three altitudes foreach of the 100 Viscount and 40 Convair routes, and for each altitude there are four temperature groups and 13 wind com-ponents. The entire calculation of these 22,000 separate pre-flight plans took only ten hours on the I.B.M. 650, and as each flightplan takes only four minutes to compute (as against 20 hours manually), amendments made necessary by alterations to radiobeacons, routes and engine performances can be made from day to day. K.L.M. is not the only organization to employ the services ofan I.B.M. Data Processing Centre for calculating flight plans. The 704 computer at the Paris centre is used by Sud for establish-ing plans for the Caravelle. The Lockheed Jetstar is now fitted with these 300 U.S. gal fuel tank nacelles, increasing range from 1,730 st miles to 2,280 miles. Larger 640-gal tanks will be fitted for 3flOO-mile ranges.
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