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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0033.PDF
FLIGHT, 6 January 1961 31 Vo posed photograph this, but the first interior picture of a Vanguard it work on BEA's routes. As recorded last week, limited fare-paying services began on December 17 AIR COMMERCE EVIDENCE ON A TAPE A TRANSCRIPT of the tape-recorded conversation between**• New York air traffic controllers operators at the time of the DC-8/Super Constellation collision on December 16 was pub-lished by the Federal Aviation Agency shortly after the accident. The following are extracts from the 101 pages of the transcript: LA GUARDIA ; I think we got an emergency. Nobody declared any-thing, but who is that jet or fast-moving aircraft that went from Preston toward Flatbush?CONTROL CENTRE : From Preston toward Flatbush? LA GUARDIA : Yes. He's at Flatbush right now.CONTROL CENTRE : Er, a fast-moving aircraft—going where? Do you know his destination?LA GUARDIA : I don't know. I think he may have—now listen to this—he may have hit one of our aircraft. We're not sure. CONTROL CENTRE : All right. Just stand by.LA GUARDIA : He's now a mile inside Flatbush. CONTROL CENTRE : All right, stand by one.LA GUARDIA : New York, New York. CONTROL CENTRE : Go ahead, La Guardia. What do you have?LA GUARDIA : All right, now we got troubles, but we're not sure of it. We lost contact with a Constellation, 266 I believe his number is.He was on a collision course with an aircraft, an unknown aircraft, head- ing north-east from Preston towards Flatbush. That aircraft now is amile outside the La Guardia outer marker, heading north-east-bound. CONTROL CENTRE : The unknown, you still have the unknown inradar contact? LA GUARDIA : No, we're not talking to the unknown, but we see him,yes. Now La Guardia Approach Control called La Guardia AirportTower: — APPROACH CONTROL : I think we have trouble with a Connie, there'ssomething wrong. He's not moving or anything. He might have got hit, uh, by another airplane. TOWER: Uh, okay.APPROACH CONTROL: Right, New York, hello, New York. IDLEWILD : Approach control. LA GUARDIA APPROACH CONTROL : Uh, is that your traffic at Flatbush?IDLEWILD: Just a minute. No, it's not our traffic, La Guardia. LA GUARDIA : Well now, we lost communications with an aircraft,and, ah, something may be wrong with him. IDLEWILD : Just a minute. It could be ours on approach control.New York. LA GUARDIA : Yeah, well, what type aircraft is that? IDLEWILD : A United DC-8.LA GUARDIA : And what, and what's his altitude? IDLEWILD : He was last cleared to 5,000. LA GUARDIA: Oh boy! Our man was at five too. We lost one aircraft. I don't know where he's at now. A public inquiry was opening in New York last Wednesday.The Airline Pilots Association had unsuccessfully applied for a fortnight's postponement pending further investigations. HERE WE GO THERE are no half-measures about British United Airways'£3,100-worth of applications to the Air Transport Licensing Board for new routes. Now that the corporations' monopoly ofscheduled services no longer has the force of law, any operator (provided he can afford the extortionate fees) is free to apply tooperate any route in his own right. The proposed BUA services are to be operated from London/Gatwick, and the following isan extract from the airline's statement about the applications: — "The route applications fall into three separate categories: —(a) Long-haul scheduled services to Lagos, Johannesburg and Khar- toum to augment the existing network of Safari routes to East, Westand Central Africa; initially at weekly frequencies with Britannias, later to be replaced on all the African routes by new long-range jets [seefootnote]. (b) A pattern of scheduled services to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam,Frankfurt, Zurich, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Munich, Turin, Milan, Rome, Genoa, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast and Dublin. Fre-quencies applied for on these routes range from twice-weekly to twice-daily.(c) Seasonal scheduled services to European and other resorts, designed for holidaymakers: Madeira, Palma, Barcelona, Nice, Lourdes,Naples, Palermo, Basle, Athens, Biarritz, Cairo/Luxor, Venice and Nicosia. Frequencies applied for on these routes range from once-fortnightly to five times weekly. It is proposed initially to operate all services in the latter twocategories with Viscount aircraft, with the option to introduce new jets at a later date " Interest centres on the fact that every one of the proposedterminals, except Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast, will involve the negotiation of traffic rights with the countriesconcerned—because the Civil Aviation Licensing Act [Section 2(3)] says that if the Minister thinks that any application "wouldin his opinion involve the negotiation [of traffic rights] which it would be inexpedient for the time being to seek, the Board shallforthzvith refuse that application . . ." Now clearly apparent is the tremendous power that theMinistry, by virtue of their complete control of traffic-rights matters, will always have over the new Board. Every applicationwill first be scrutinized by the Ministry's traffic-rights experts and, if the Minister is advised that it looks politically tricky, he candirect the Board to reject it forthwith. Will BUA's applications be thus vetted by the Minister? The Ministry, not surprisingly, are silent on this point. But even if theydecide to let these applications—some of which certainly do look politically tricky—go before the Board, British United will still beconfronted with the obstruction of Section 2(2)(g). This requires the Board to take into account "any commercial agreement reason-ably entered into ... by the holder of any air service licence already granted." This means that BEA's inevitable opposition tothe Europe-area applications will be based on the fact that it is in pool with foreign carriers on all of the routes concerned. Assuming furthermore that the Minister does not direct theBoard to reject BUA's applications on "inexpediency" grounds, and also that the Board decides in its wisdom that pool agreementsare not sacrosanct and grants British United licences for at least some of the routes applied for—assuming all these things, theMinister will still have to negotiate the necessary traffic rights. With what degree of enthusiasm he will do this, having in mindhis vested interest in the State corporations, remains to be seen. But assuming that he does bring maximum pressure to bear onthe foreign governments concerned, it also remains to be seen whether these governments will regard the idea of multipledesignation of British carriers as a threat to their own carriers. They could well demand that, if BUA is to be granted the neces-sary third and fourth freedoms, then this airline's share of the traffic must be a slice of BEA's share. Which will bring to the foreonce again the familiar old bogey-words "material diversion"— words which are embalmed in the new Act [2(2)(f)] as one of thethings which must be taken into consideration by the Board in granting licences. Of course, British United Airways know the difficulties as wellas anyone, and perhaps £3,100 is not a lot of money to a big independent—especially if it establishes BUA in the minds ofcompeting independents as Britain's prospective No 2 European operator. This is a test case, and it will be worth watching closely. Ofparticular interest perhaps, since few of the above difficulties apply, will be British United's applications to operate domesticservices from London to Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast. J. M. R. Footnote: The Daily Express last week reported that a contract forfour VClOs will be signed "in a few weeks" by British United Airways. A spokesman for the airline was unable to confirm or deny this report.
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