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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0731.PDF
FLIGHT, 27 May 1960 731 Straight and Level ^ kn°w' an<^ we've aU said itso often, that London Airport North really is a national dis-grace. The Ministry knows it, and there are some hard-working civil servantswho deplore the fact that it took 2? years for the new terminal plans to beapproved, plans which themselves were years late being commissioned. But we have to put up with the placefor another year or two. So may I beg the Ministry to make it less of a scandalthan it is? The picture below (which comprisestwo joined-up snapshots) was taken by a Flight colleague. The people in thepicture are passengers from three 707s, perhaps 300 of them at a conservativeguess—maybe 400. The chaos was quite awful. The remarks being made byforeigners were really quite nasty. No one knew where to find his bag-gage; there were only four Customs officers in attendance; and the generalatmosphere, notwithstanding the cour- tesy of the Customs officers (when theycould be got hold of), was: "You're now in Britain and we couldn't care less." So come on, chaps—try to create afriendlier impression. Put up big posters apologizing for the temporary arrange-ments, display models or pictures of the new terminal, provide chairs for the oldladies and some rocking horses and see- saws for the toddlers (who, as wesaw, can drive baggage-searching and Customs-queueing parents to distrac-tion). And suggest to HM Customs, tactfully but firmly, that one officer per75-100 people simply isn't good enough. • This year the Royal Aeronautical Society's Orville Wright prize has been awarded to an engineer—who is not actually a member of the aircraft indus- try—for his papers entitled Asymmetric- ally Plate-reinforced Circular Holes in a Uniformly End-loaded Flat Plate and Symmetrically-loaded Circular Plates under the Combined Action of Lateral and End-loading. Things, they say, have come a long way since the days of bamboo andcanvas. The odd thought is that things still bust short of 100 per cent fully-factored design loads. Are we becoming too esoteric? • Did you see the Flight photographin last week's issue of a Comet 4 con- trailing westwards over the NorthAtlantic, a 1,000 m.p.h. picture taken from a Boeing 707 flying eastwards ata height of 39,000ft? The sky, heaven knows, is a very bigplace, and 2,000ft quadrantal height separations above 28,000ft make thepossibility of collisions remote. (The Comet 4, though it doesn't look it fromthe picture, or from others taken during the five ensuing seconds, was presum-ably at 42,000ft.) But the staff member who took thepictures confesses to a mild hand wobble as he put his camera away andresumed his dinner. The Comet seemed to have been at the same height; andthough lateral separation was appreci- able, what navigator (he asked himself)can hold a track to within half a mile with present navigation equipment? If that thing had come through thecabin it would, as Capt Adkins of collision-light fame once remarked, haveruined his day. One just hopes that someone, somewhere, had both aircraftin full control. • Though Blue Streak's cancellationwas largely on technical grounds, the technical decision was taken in thewarm, euphoric atmosphere of the approach to the summit. If the same technical decision had tobe taken now, would Blue Streak still be cancelled? Are we right to lean soheavily on the deterrent of our American allies, whose pre-summit U-2 tactless-ness so disturbingly shook British con- fidence in American diplomacy andjudgment? These are profoundly difficult ques-tions. No doubt there will be many opinionated attempts to answer them.For my part I freely admit that I do not know the answers.There can be no change in the tech- nical arguments for cancelling BlueStreak. But I somehow feel that the technical arguments appear less weightywhen considered in the bitter cold of the post-summit atmosphere. Let's faceit: the cancellation of Blue Streak was at least partly a political decision. Andthe political circumstances in which that decision was taken are now ratherdifferent. • There was something particularlypoignant in Dr Horace King's contribu- tion to the adjournment debate in theHouse of Commons last week on the Transair DC-3 accident (see p. 739): — "One of the victims of the tragic crashwas the brilliant young daughter of one of my closest personal friends. MaryCotton was the head girl of her school, an outstanding athlete, the winner ofthe open university scholarship and a brilliant young medical student on thethreshold of a great career. Her death, like that of her student companions, wasa grievous loss to her native town and to her country." Accident statistics are cold and imper-sonal, and they can be juggled by experts to prove almost anything. Dr King'stribute to Mary Cotton reminds every- one of what accidents really mean, andI think he has thereby made a contribu- tion to air safety. • I cannot help feeling sorry for theCanadian firm of Aviation Electric. Their vice-president, D. R. Taylor, is toread a paper at the a.g.m. of the Cana- dian Aeronautical Institute. Its title:Short Run Production Problems. Could someone ship a few copies over here,please? • "Of course, he was a fool to comedown as low as 68,000ft."—USAF senior officer. ROGER BACON Shambles at the shantytown: a picture taken in the Customs hall of London Airport North at about 10.30 p.m. on May 12 see first item)
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