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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 1265.PDF
FLIGHT, 5 August 1960 DANGEROUS DIVERSION THE British United Airways Britannia which was forced toland at Ankara on July 18 was the subject of a question in thePnmmons j ast week. The aircraft, which was carrying 103 service-en and their families and eleyen crew, was requested to land at Ankara Airport by the Turkish air traffic control authorities.Previously it had been reported that it was intercepted and forced -town by four jet fighters from the Eskisehir air base in WesternTurkey after it had overflown a prohibited military zone. In a witten reply, Mr R. Allan, Joint Parliamentary Under Secretaryto* the Foreign Office, said that the pilot had been briefly ques- tioned and the aircraft was subsequently allowed to resume itsflight The reason for the deviation from the authorized route was being investigated. Earlier it was said that the pilot hadreported that he had been unable to follow his assigned course because of bad weather. MEA STEPS UP THE PACE IN June this year MEA's seven Viscounts achieved a utilizationof 9.55hr a day. Total hours flown by the Viscount fleet in thefirst half of the year is 13 per cent higher than it was in 1959. Passenger traffic was up too; in the first six months of 1960 theincrease over last year was 14 per cent. The airline is now actively preparing for its Cornet 4Cs, thefirst of which should be delivered in December this year. An initial group of MEA captains and first officers should arrive inBritain for conversion training next Monday, August 8, as the spearhead of three courses which will be held later this year. Thetotal number of pilots who will attend before an aircraft is delivered is 23, but others will follow in the new year. Whenthe Comet 4Cs go into service they will operate return flights from Beirut to Vienna, Frankfurt and London three times a week;Beirut, Athens, Geneva and London three times a week; and Beirut, Rome and London once a week, so that MEA Comets willoperate a daily service between London and Beirut. The remain- . 199 ing service westwards from Beirut is to Rome, Madrid and Lisbonon a service which will operate twice a week. Eastwards, Comets ™, °P"ate t0 Dhahran, Karachi, Kuwait, Bahrein, Dohar,Jeddah, Aden, Baghdad and Tehran. SPRLNGBOKS LEAP THEIR TROUBLES "VT EITHER Kano, Nigeria, nor Leopoldville in the Belgian-1- J Congo will be served by South African Airways Boeing 707s when they go into service on the London route on October 1 (seeFlight, July 15, 1960). The airline does not have traffic rights at Kano but has previously used the airport to refuel its DC-7Bs.The 707s may now use Brazzaville for refuelling or may possibly —when the 4,000ft main runway extension at Johannesburg JanSmuts Airport is finished—operate non-stop to Rome. The decision not to use Kano is said to have been taken beforethe Addis Ababa conference at which refusal was threatened of ground facilities and airspace to South African Airways.Mr D. H. C. de Plessis, general manager of South Africa's rail- ways administration, has said that SAA has already written off thewest coast of Africa because of the paucity of traffic. In any case it seems that the decision to call at Brazzaville may also betemporary; when Jan Smuts extensions are complete" the 707s will be able to fly between Johannesburg and Rome without anypenalty in payload. Four return flights a week to London have been scheduled, butthese will not keep the three 707s fully utilized. Although frequencies may be stepped up in 1961 it has been queried whetherthe airline have plans for expansion in other directions—say to fly to Louanda in Angola (which has been used by SAA DC-7Bsduring the present Congo troubles) and then across the hump of Africa to the Canaries or Spanish Africa. Mr du Plessis saidrecently that SAA now considered that the Boeings would break even with a 60 per cent payload in contrast to earlier estimates of70 per cent. But SAA still does not expect to make money on the 707, initially at least. BREVITIES Boston and Providence have been added to Allegheny Airlines' "no reservation" commuter network. Starways of Liverpool have applied for a UK internal service on the route Dundee and/or Glasgow, Liverpool and/or London with DC-3s or DC-4s. July 29 was the first anniversary of Boeing 707 operations by Qantas.The seven aircraft have flown 16,300hr since July 1959, an average of 2,330hr per aircraft per year, or 6.45hr per aircraft per day. The new runway at Coventry Airport is to be equipped with airfield lighting supplied by General Electric Co. The contract for high-intensity runway lights, high- and low-intensity approach lights, taxiway lights and control gear is worth about £10,000. Having sprung its Boeing 707-420 surprise in the 59th market report,Aircraft Exchange this month offers three Short Solent Mk 3 flying- boats. They are offered as a lot with a sub-stantial quantity of spare parts for $340,000. Mr A. E. C. Derrett has been appointed BOAC sales manager in Brazil. He will shortly take up duties in Rio de Janeiro Ansett-ANA, it is reported, have receivedthe Australian Government's approval for the purchase of another Viscount and threeFokker Friendships. Carvair is the name to be adopted by Channel Air Bridge for theAviation Traders ATL-98 conversion of the Douglas DC-4. The name is compounded of the words "cars-via-air" and was suggested by two of5,000 competitors who participated in the contest organized by the Air Bridge to name the new aircraft. The two winners are to be giventree cross-Channel trips with their cars. . Jersey Airlines' interest in the Handley Page Herald or the Avro 748is expressed in an application to the ATAC to operate scheduled services with these aircraft (following an initial period with Dakotasor Herons) between Coventry and Dublin. The frequency applied for is initially three return flights a week. Air Safaris are another operator with5™s Jn mind. They have applied to operate them (to complement u^-6s after a period with Hermes) between Gatwick - Bournemouth -Biarritz and Faro. On the right, behind the Sabena board, is the fuselage of the first t-aravelle 6, the heavier (103,6201b) version with 12,5001b thrust Avon i. -i00" *° be added at Sud's Toulouse factory are the wings, which are'built or Bougenais (Nantes) and the tail, built by Fiat at Turin, jabena have four Caravelle 6s on order and the first will be be . .,, delivered "at the beginning of next year" Mr T. M. Noble, formerly general manager of Airline Air Spares,Southend, has been appointed a director. The use of flight recorders in jets and turboprops of more than12,5001b take-off weight is to be made mandatory by the FAA from November 1, but until May 1, 1961 is allowed for recorders to be fitted. Aerolineas took delivery of their sixth Comet 4 at Hatfield onJuly 25. The first overseas operator to buy Comets, their order is now complete. Eight Comets were due to have been handed over in thethree months ending on the last day of July this year. East African Airways Comet services between London and Nairobiare now scheduled to start on September 17 and to Dar-es-Salaam on September 22. The twice-weekly Nairobi services will be routed viaRome, Khartoum and Entebbe, and the weekly service to Dar-es-Salaam via Rome, Khartoum and Nairobi. The first DC-7F all-cargo transport went into American Airlinesfreight service last Monday. The aircraft are being used to operate American's first non-stop coast-to-coast all-cargo service. Final deliveriesof the 15 DC-7Fs which the airline has on order should be by the end of the year. Passenger revenue miles in the first half of 1960 increasedby 24 per cent over the same period of last year but profit was down by about a fifth. Yeugeny Loginov, chief of Aeroflot, said recently that Soviet passengerand freight services have expanded to such an extent that as many passengers were carried last year as between 1951 and 1956. TheRussian seven-year plan anticipates a sixfold increase during the years 1959-65. By the end of this period, he said, the Soviet Union will haveconsiderably surpassed all 50 air companies of the United States taken together for the volume of air carriage." After 13 accident-free years of airmail and passenger services on anetwork of routes based on the downtown Chicago, Midway and O'Hare Airports, a Chicago Helicopter Airways S-58 was involved in afatal accident on July 28. The helicopter, which was carrying eleven passengers and a crew of two, crashed into a Chicago cemetery andcaught fire. There were no survivors. The S-58 was one of eight operated by the airline.
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