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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0189.PDF
PLIGHT, 10 February 1961 Correspondence j\u Editor of "Flight" is not necessarily in agreement with the views exp.ssed by correspondents in these columns. Names and addresses ofwri-urs, not for publication in detail, must in all cases accompany letters. jet Fuel and Safety CONGRATULATIONS on your leader on "Jet Fuel andSafety" (January 13). I would have liked to see it put morestrongly. What is wrong with emotion? Emotion is the main- spring of action. Can anyone contemplate the burning to deathof :heir nearest and dearest without emotion? Lord Brabazon could have made his case stronger by appealing to emotion. TGA's reply, far from being scientific, is largely a mass ofirrelevant words. When the few points in favour of JP.4 are weeded out they prove to be the airlines' affair: dirt and waterin the fuel; re-starting in the air; whether to take off with more than the maximum permitted weight; leaking tanks or fuel systems;engines running hotter, etc. "They (NACA) found the most common cause of fire afteran accident is from engine oil or hydraulic fluid coming in contact with hot metal. This is what causes most fires. . . . Kerosineis closer to engine oil than gasoline and they found that it will ignite from contact with hot metal parts as much as 400° lower intemperature than JP.4." What of it? Granted there is already a fire: with kerosine, passengers have more time to escape. It is acommonsense issue of which the public must be the judge. You state that "in aviation there is always the question of how muchone should pay for safety." I suggest that the industry is not paying enough. The insurance burden must be severe. After all,the industry kills from 200 to 300 people per 100 million passenger hours, whereas the roads kill only 75 [in the USA—Ed.]. Hessle, Yorks A. H. CRAWSHAW BUA's Jet Plans BRITISH UNITED AIRWAYS is applying for licences toenable it to operate the minimum viable jet fleet. Its recent paper, Independent Airlines—The Future (reviewed in Flightfor January 27) stated that "passengers, despite fare differentials, prefer to travel by the faster and up-to-date aircraft. In the in-tensely competitive conditions of today, these passengers must be attracted by any company which is to pay its way." Jets, ifthey are to be economic, must be kept fully occupied on an in- tegrated pattern of scheduled services. Hence our application forlicences. I must emphasize that the four VClOs and five D.H. Tridents mentioned in the paper are the minimum fleet which webelieve can operate such a service. Comment on page 128 Flight for January 27 might lead readersto think that we are out to compete in size with the two corpora- tions. This is very far from the case. Our planned investmentof nearly £20 million is sufficient for the smallest fleet of aircraft which can be operated on an economic basis under modern con-ditions. There is no ambition to become a giant airline. The routes needed would, we wrote, "involve no more than 20per cent of the corporations' traffic growth for the years 1961- 1965." Calculations were based on the 957,347,800 capacity seat-miles yielded by the routes for which we have applied. Given a 60 per cent passenger load factor, this yields 574,408,680 pas-senger seat-miles—20.8 per cent of the corporations' estimated five years' growth. May I make one more point? The 20.8 per cent of five years'estimated growth is not equally divided between the two corpora- tions. Our calculations show that 30.9 per cent would come fromBEA and 14.3 per cent from BOAC. These percentages are based on the assumption that the growth is 14 per cent over the nextfive years. As we heard recently, BEA did a great deal better than this in 1960—in fact, they achieved 19.6 per cent. If this trendcontinues, the percentages will be correspondingly lower for BEA. All experienced readers of Flight will appreciate that time isneeded in founding a modern jet fleet—the interval between ordering and delivery of the aircraft is between two and threeyears; further time is needed to develop the scheduled services. We estimate that the services would not be yielding the574,000,000 passenger seat-miles until the spring of 1965. F. A. LAKER, Executive Director, British United Airways Ltd [Comment on Mr Laker's letter is made on page 194.—Ed.] T AM always a trifle amused when anybody in one of the inde-1 pendent airlines somewhat loftily proclaims, as Mr F. A. Laker has just done (your issue of January 27), that "we believe that thecorporations could do better with a bit of stimulus"—the independents, apparently, being the people to administer it. I suppose that these commentators do not consider that BEAand BOAC already have enough "stimulus" from such highly efficient carriers as KLM, Air France, SAS, Sabena, Pan American 189 and TWA, to mention a few of their international competitors.And I will be charitable and will not assume that what the inde- pendents really mean is that they want permission from thelicensing authorities to operate on routes (presumably the profit- able ones) on which the corporations, in the national interest,have shown much initiative and spent considerable money throughout the years in building up traffic. Or is it that the independents feel that some "stimulus" mightbe provided if they obtained permission to fly services on routes on which it might well be difficult for them (or the corporations)to make money, although clearly it is important in the national interest to have scheduled British air services on such routes?It will indeed be instructive to note the routes on which BUA and other independents apply to operate services in the future. One hopes that the independents, on their part, will find"stimulus" from the enterprise which the corporations and their predecessors have displayed in pioneering not only new routesbut many types of new British aircraft. London W13 A. L. WATSON [There are also people who would be "a trifle amused" to be told thatBEA are stimulated by their European competitors, with all of whom they pool and share earnings. Similarly, BOAC pool with Qantas, Air-India, SAA, EAA, CAA, MiEA, TCA—and even British United Airways. BOAC's strongest stimulus comes from TWA and PanAm, whoseGovernment rejects pooling as contrary to the public interest.—Ed.] Operational Control /CONGRATULATIONS on Mr Anson's excellent article in^ your January 27 issue on Operational Control. I would only differ from Mr Anson in one major respect, namely that distinc-tion should be made between flight dispatch and operational con- trol. In actual fact, flight dispatch as conceived in the UnitedStates is one method of exercising operational control. Having been responsible (as the IATA representative) forarguing the acceptance of the current definition by ICAO over ten years ago, I am particularly well aware of the reasons forchoice of words. However, I think today the wording is some- what ambiguous and stilted. From time to time it has led to mis-understandings. To my mind at least a more appropriate descrip- tion of operational control would be the right of the operator toconduct his business in the most efficient manner provided that he does not transgress the regulations of the authority controllingthe airspace through which he is flying, or the regulations of his own State of registry. One final observation is that operational control, which in thecase of flight dispatch was originated for safety reasons, is now a major influence on efficiency and economy as well. Shepperton-on-Thames, Middx E. W. PIKE Low-power Flying CIINCE efforts are continually being made to fly (as opposed^ to soar) with the least possible power, it seems timely to appraise the chances of success. There seem to be three schoolsof thought. The first seeks to fly by manpower translated basically into pedals and a propeller (there are such aircraft still beingdesigned). The second comprises ornithopter optimists and the third votes for flying with the minimum engine power. I know that in the p3st it was predicted that the helicopterwould never be a success, let alone of practical value, and the prophets were confounded. Yet I would stick my neck out andsuggest that the first two schools I have mentioned will never find success.True, a pilot could get off the ground by pedalling; but it is doubtful if he could sustain the effort for more than a minute.That was the opinion of Mr Frank Barnwell, who was one of our best designers and who explored this field. There seems littlereason to alter this opinion—so is it all worth it? The ornithopter brigade find that shaping wings like a birdand napping them is not enough. Though our feathered friends' wing movements are known, to emulate a bird's forward flightwould entail mechanisms of prohibitive total weight. What of the small-engine adherents? I have flown with anengine said to be of 25 h.p. but developing certainly not more than 20 h.p. Though I did most of the drawings for this aircraft,I feel that it was conventional and could have been much simpler and lighter. Then the Wren flew strongly on 398 c.c. but it, too,was substantially conventional and bigger than the aircraft I visualize.There seems to be too much copying of conventional types and a tendency to scale down the more powerful aircraft. Onedoesn't scale down a cabin cruiser to produce a rowing boat! There have been attempts to design really ultralight types assuch from the start. For example, the BAT Crow, the US Dormoy Bathtub and Stitz Sky Baby, the French De Pischoff Avionetteand the German Grade. One might well include Mignet among this small list for he is a genius and was only discredited becausehe put too much faith in the skill and commonsense of his disciples; his Pou Bebe 16bis was a gem.These were attempts of the distant past. I nearly said of "the
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