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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 0157.PDF
FLIGHT, 9 January 1959 A PRESENTATION OF BRITAIN'S NEW TURBOPROP AIRLINER |N a few days' time the first Vickers Vanguard is to make its first flight. The following pages bring Flight's readers up to date with the engineer- ing and economic facts about the aircraft. It will be seen that the Vanguard promises to be a highly efficient tool of the air transport trade. But good engineering and good economics are not the only guarantees of acceptance, prerequisite though these two things may be. The overall design-strategy must be right, otherwise efficient economics and sound nuts-and-bolts—the "tactical" considerations—may be academic. What, then, is the strategy behind the Vanguard? There are five answers to this question. One, the Vanguard is the first British airliner which can truly claim to possess the star quality of built-in airline experience—the quality which has ensured Lockheed's and Douglas's domination of world airline markets to date. The Vanguard is not—as was the Viscount when it first appeared— just "a good aeroplane." This is the two-dimensional view of an aeroplane's suitability for airline use; the third dimension must be added from a depth of airline operating design- experience. Vickers and Rolls-Royce, with 350 Viscounts in service, are acknowledged to possess this experience, and it has all been built into the Vanguard. Two, the Vanguard sprang from the requirements of a most economically intransigent kind of air transport—the field of international short-to-medium stage operations. It can be said without fear of dissent that a transport designed to master the economics of intra-European routes is basically master of the denser short-to-medium stage networks anywhere. Three, the choice of turboprop propulsion permits the Vanguard to exploit with greater margins of profit these economically difficult short-to-medium stages. (The average intra-European sector distance is less than 300 miles.) Such stages tend to be too short to permit full economic use to be made of the jet's speed; yet the Vanguard—with a cruising speed of 425 m.p.h. and above—can offer block speeds which are highly competitive with the 500-550 m.p.h. jets. Such routes are the realm of the Vanguard even in idealized air- traffic-control conditions. In the practical conditions of day- to-day operations, in which airliners have to cruise or hold as they are told, the more fuel-thrifty Vanguard may be a decisive advantage. Four, the size of the Vanguard is a realistic attempt to provide a vehicle which can shift annually increasing traffic flows at a lower specific cost. The Vanguard represents a breakaway from the past tradition that short-haul airliners are small and long-haul airliners are big. There is as great a, if not greater, need on the shorter stages to handle growing traffic volumes by increased aircraft-size rather than by operating smaller airliners at increased frequencies. In this way the Vanguard reduces the specific cost of operation, and fares can be lowered to produce a "benevolent" generation of more traffic and a further reduction of specific costs. This is an important aspect of the Vanguard's strategy, and it is no doubt the justification for Vickers' claim that the aircraft is capable of cutting air fares by half. There is, of course, the present limitation of a fixed fare for all types of aircraft; but there are strong signs that the inevitable eventual differentiation of price between jets and propellers will come sooner rather than later. When this happens, the Vanguard's low-cost capabilities can be exploited to the full. Thus not only can the aircraft be easily topped up with bulky freight during off-peak passenger periods, but it can also be regarded as a realistic answer to the need for positive development of freight. Hitherto the cargo market has been largely developed by passenger aircraft, and the Vanguard's design recognizes this fact. For specialist air freight operators, however, a full freighter version—with a 40,000 lb payload—is offered. Five, the Vanguard uniquely offers the operator a complete solution to one of his biggest economic problems: the econo- mic unbalance of seasonal-type traffic. With but small penal- ties in speed and weight, very large underfloor freight capacity is available—enough, it is claimed, to permit full design pay- load to be carried with but one quarter of the seats filled. These are the factors which should make the Vanguard not just a good aeroplane, but a good airline aeroplane.
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