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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 1463.PDF
708 FLIGHT, 22 May 1959 Most of Aeroflot's international routes are now flown by Tu-104As, one of which is seen here during its recent proving flight to London Flight to MOSCOW ... All in all, therefore, the cost-revenue aspect of the Moscowservice looks good. B.E.A. expect to break even with a 51 per cent load-factor, and this should be comfortably exceeded after theintroductory period. What sort of people will travel B.E.A. to Moscow? Thoughmarket research into this particular question provides an even less exact answer than usual, it appears that traffic will fall underfour broad headings: (1) Diplomatic and political; (2) cultural; (3) business; and (4) tourist. Under the first heading come embassy staff and diplomatic bags,of which there is a regular movement between London and Moscow, all of it haying previously travelled by other carriers.Also under this heading can be counted politicians, trade-union delegations, and so on. The second type of traffic—unavoidably definable as cultural—includes footballers, ballet dancers, circus performers, tiddly- wink champions, etc., of which there is a steady two-way flow.(How B.E.A. will carry the 100-strong Sadlers Wells opera com- pany, plus 12 changes of scenery, is a problem that will no doubtbe tackled if and when it arises.) Business traffic may, if trade-links continue to strengthen asthey have over the past year, prove lucrative. And tourists are already more than a trickle: 8,000 British visitors went to Russiain 1957, and preliminary figures indicate that this figure was almost doubled in 1958. It should not be imagined that Great Britain alone will be theorigin of all the aforementioned types of B.E.A. clientele. The Corporation has its eye on the U.S.A. and Canada as a goodsource of Moscow-bent travellers, and it will be advertising its new service hard in North America. The availability of aB.O.A.C.-B.E.A. service from half a dozen points in the North American continent through to Moscow sounds attractive, andwill no doubt be exploited to the full. Just now we mentioned that Aeroflot does not subscribe to I.A.T.A. This fact prompts a number of fundamental questionsabout Aeroflot's relationship to air transport in the rest of the world. Perhaps I.A.T.A., to the Russians, signifies Americancapitalist intrigue and restrictionism, a means of keeping prices artificially high to the benefit of the producer and to the depriva-tion of the consumer, and so forth. Whether they may have a point here is for the protagonists of I.A.T.A. to disclaim; forus there is something rather whimsical about the fact that the American civil air authorities dislike I.A.T.A. as much as theRussians appear to do. Of course a good deal of LA.T.A.'s procedures and practicesform an excellent basis for the drawing up of a commercial agree- ment, being simply good air transport business evolved in thelight of long experience. In fact, many of the clauses and expres- sions in the commercial agreement between B.E.A. and Aeroflotare on the same lines as I.A.T.A. procedures. The agreement was drawn up a year ago, and it began life as a 30-page draftprepared as a basis for discussion by B.E.A., who obviously have more experience than Aeroflot in these matters. These discussions went smoothly: to quote one experiencedB.E.A. official: "I would sooner deal with the Russians than one or two other airlines I know." They were, he said, most co-opera-tive and agreeable—which is remarkable considering the very different commercial outlooks of the two airlines. Numerousdifficulties arose: for example, B.E.A. wanted to offer a two-class service, whereas at that time only one fare existed—correspondingroughly with I.A.T.A. first-class. In the event, as a note in last week's issue recalled, the Tu-104As will, like the Viscount 806s,be operated mixed-class with 16 first-class and 54 tourist-class (all but four five-abreast) seats. Summing up, it seems reasonable to predict that not only willthe new service be a promising political step in the right direction —a positive contribution by B.E.A. to better U.K.-U.S.S.R.relations; it should also be commercially profitable, at least in the long run. (In Part 2 the author hopes to describe, from Moscow, the operationalbackground to the new service.) SAUNDERS-ROE P.531 PROGRESS FURTHER news of P.531 developments came to hand soonafter last week's "Helicopters of the World" issue went to press. After stating that a small batch of P.531-Os is being supplied to theRoyal Navy for evaluation trials [Flight, March 20] an article in Saro Progress (the company's house-journal) goes on: — "As part of the development programme, one of the prototype air-craft is being fitted with strengthened transmission rotor systems, and this machine will then be used for development work on the firstplanned production version of the helicopter, the P.531-1. "The P.531-1 is fitted with a Blackburn Turmo 603-series turbinedeveloping 425 s,h,p, (maximum one hour rating). This single proto- type will be joined later by a substantial number of production-typeP.531-1 helicopters which are now in the course of construction, and which will be employed in an intensive development programme. TheP.531-1 will be in full-scale production in 1960. "The airframe of the P.531-1 (including the rotor and transmission systems) is designed to accommodate an engine in the 1,000 s.h.p.nominal power category. It is anticipated that this engine would be derated to 650 s.h.p. to obtain a 'supercharged' gas turbine effect, i.e.,to obtain a helicopter performance which is essentially independent of most practical combinations of climate and altitude. The basic P.531airframe is capable both of absorbing these powers and of operating at the associated increased aircraft weights (of the order of 5,000 lb)-Apart, therefore, from detail changes in the engine installation, there is no difficulty in modifying P.531-1 aircraft up to the full P.531-2(650 s.h.p.) standard. "Several suitable alternative powerplants are available in the1,000 s.h.p. category, and the helicopter has been deliberately designed to accommodate any one of these. The development of these largerengines is still in progress, and Saunders-Roe (in conjunction with potential users of the P.531) are studying their progress with greatinterest. Several P.531-1 airframes are being set aside for P.531-2 prototype work, and P.531-2 development and production will besuitably phased-in to the overall programme for the P.531 type."
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