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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0964.PDF
40 FLIGHT, 8 July 1961 AIR COMMERCE . . . THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE THE only airline to retain its identity in the amalgamations whichhave led to the formation of British United Airways is the Channel Air Bridge—now Channel Air Bridge Ltd. The implications of the specialnature, and promising future, of the cars-across-the-Channel business are re-examined here in the light of the recent revelation of theBlackburn SP 60 cargo tug, a type of vehicle in which the Air Bridge has displayed more than a passing interest WHAT will the new Channel Air Bridge look like five orsix years from now? What, in fact, will be the pattern ofContinental car, passenger and freight travel during the middle years of the 1960s, when the enterprise that Air Charterbegan in 1954 is twice as old as it is today?" Major political upheavals aside, expansion of air ferry traffic to the Continentshould continue more or less at the same rate as it has done over the past five years; the great change in the pattern seems likelyto be a minor diminution of importance of the Channel airports relative to those of the deeper penetration routes many milesfurther inland. With more cars, more time off and more Con- tinental holidays, distance still lends enchantment to the morefar-flung holiday destinations. Time and trouble-saving in satisfy- ing this trend to travel further afield is the reason d'etre of thedeeper penetration routes, one of the more urgent reasons for construction of the ATL-98 car ferry conversion, and for theexamination of advanced new projects. Applications have been made by Channel Air Bridge for routesto Paris, Dijon, Lyons, Strasbourg, Tours, Dusseldorf and Bremen. Although not all are likely to be granted (Paris in particular ishotly contested by Silver City, who also dispute Strasbourg because of their DC-3 service to Basle) these points give access forjourneys deep into the Continent of Europe and Scandinavia. A year or two ago they would have made commercial nonsense; nowit seems that there are sufficient experienced cars-by-air travellers who are prepared to meet the much greater expense of taking acar further afield—and what motorist is going to hire another car if he can possibly take his own? But until the ATL-98 comes along(first nose was to be sawn off a DC-4 earlier this month) present services to Calais, Ostend and Rotterdam continue to provide theexpansion of traffic that will make the long-haul routes possible. The alternative entries into Continental Europe were selected froma passenger survey made with a reminder that for extra distances higher fares must be charged, nevertheless 3,000 letters of applica-tion for travel on these as yet non-existent routes were received during the past year. So the future of the Air Bridge is closely associated with thelonger-haul routes from Southend deeper into the Continent. There is also a possibility that as 90 per cent of all passenger andaccompanied-car traffic originates in the United Kingdom, one day the Bridge will be extended to inland Britain; perhaps to theNorth Country or to Scotland. In any event the policy of the company is to link up as far as possible with railway services and,as previously recorded, the Southend local authority have under consideration a combined airport terminal building and railwaystation modelled on that of its Gatwick neighbour. The new air bridge vehicle—the ATL-98—also provides thefirst real opportunity of alleviating the intense seasonal problem which has always beset the car ferry operators. The answer to this,it has always been appreciated, is to find work elsewhere during the British winter, and the possibility is being studied of usingan ATL-98 on inter-island vehicle ferry services and on similar services in North America: one might be the carriage of carsacross the Great Lakes. None of these is feasible with the Bristol 170, which has capacity for only two American-sized cars. Possibly one of the less obvious ways in which new equipmentshould benefit the Air Bridge is by transforming the whole opera- tion into something considerably more up to date than it evercould be with the present equipment. Affectionately regarded as the Bristol Freighters are (and they still have a useful short-haullife ahead of them), the whole standard of service should be im- proved when the larger aircraft is introduced. What the airline'smanagement wou'd like to see on all services is a much lower noise level in the aircraft, a better standard of comfort and the provisionof toilets. There is sufficient weight to spare in the ATL-98 to make the interior quite plush and quiet and the Air Bridgenaturally hope to gain ground on their Air Ferry rivals at least until the time that Silver City's new equipment comes along. One difficulty of this type of operation that the deeper-penetra- Another full-load departure from Southend. This year the number of cars carried should rise from 18,400 to about 25,000, supplementary passengers from 42,000 to 72,000 tion routes can alleviate only to a limited extent is that of lowutilization; after great efforts it is still only about l,400hr a year. If the solution does not lie with new routes, it may be found withnew vehicles—not necessarily aircraft. Attractive at first sight, a practical hovercraft has many of the limitations of a surface cross-Channel vessel; its usefulness is restricted by the time taken to load and unload its cargo. The ideal vehicle hovercraft might beone that carried 100 cars across the Channel at lOOkt, but Douglas Whybrow, a director of Channel Air Bridge, is inclinedto believe that an air-cushion vehicle with favourable operating economics would have to carry more man 100 cars. Nor, forpractical and administrative reasons, would there be much possibility of using anything but expensive fixed installations asterminal points. Much more attractive to the Air Bridge in the long term is theVTOL prime mover idea (possibly as exemplified by the Blackburn SP 60 project). Its function would be to lift nacelles containingpayload to the various destinations on the company's routes and it would touch down only to refuel and when change of crews wasrequired. In Air Bridge service its turn-round time would be merely that taken to off-load one nacelle and pick up the next—already pre-loaded with passengers, cars or freight. The variety of tasks that such a machine could perform should allow a highutilization because the usefulness of such a vehicle would not be confined to the car ferry operation. A planned lifting capacity of18 cars or 90 passengers should in addition allow a very useful inter-city European freight service to be developed and for thefirst time it would also enable large commercial vehicles and motor coaches to be airlifted across the Channel. Although these are long-term ideas they are being seriouslyconsidered by the Air Bridge for the time when usefulness of the Bristol Freighter is drawing to an end. It is not the Blackburnproject per se that appeals to the Air Bridge so much as the con- cept of employing in air transport a separate prime mover; theyargue that what is so obviously logical in other fields of transport (tugs and barges, commercial prime movers and trailers) has anobvious application in the air. The really expensive part of the transport system—the prime mover itself—ought to be divorcedfrom the payload SO that it can continue to work unhampered by operations on what is essentially a container for passengers orfreight. Liberating the container from the prime mover ought to allow much greater freedom in its conception, design beingdirected, as the Air Bridge sees it, for operation at maximum utilization—to the extent of the prime mover being able to con-tinue to lift a reduced payload even with one or two engines inoperative. 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 •Three months only Calais 532 608 1,033 1,108 1,510 Ostend 15* 209 339 717 1,019 Rotterdam 33* 341 848 1,041 How the Air Bridge's revenue ton miles are going—a "from the beginning" across-the-Channel howgozit The table shows how traffic has expanded at each of the threeContinental airports since the Air Bridge service began; it pro- vides the justification for imaginative planning for half a decadeahead. All three terminals have plans for expansion to cope with increasing numbers of services during the months of peak summertraffic. At Calais approval has been given for an expansion of the
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