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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0396.PDF
404 FLIGHT, 30 March 1961 Straight nd Level " T EA have been told [by a certain |j trade union] that unless cer- tain points in industrial rela- tions are cleared up quickly, they will recommend their 3,000 members at airports in Britain and Europe to take an hour to 'contemplate the sad state of industrial relations in BE A.' " The situation, a union official says, "is causing tremendous irritation." Connoisseurs of industrial relations will appreciate that the members of the union concerned want more money, and that BEA don't want to give it to them. Well, I don't know the rights and wrongs of this particular dispute, but I am intrigued by the latest union euphemism for the word strike. Con- templation . . . THE EDITOR: "Come now, Bacon, why are you not writing Straight and Level ? The Production Editor tells me it has to go to press in half an hour's time, and he hasn't had a single word of copy yet." BACON: "I know. I'm contemplating." THE EDITOR: "Contemplating? What do you mean, contemplating?" BACON: "I am contemplating the sad state of affairs arising from my request for a 10 per cent increase in my salary to £24,000 a year. If Dr Beeching rates that for running British Railways, I reckon I rate it for this job. Straight and Level is of equal importance to the nation. It is now two days since I put in my request, and there is still no decision. I find it tremendously irrita- ting." THE EDITOR (after one-fifth of a second's contemplation): "Either you write Straight and Level during the next half- hour, or ..." So I wrote Straight and Level. • According to a Reuter report, the chairman of Kegworth Parish Council, Mr R. Sibson, says that airport noise can make people infertile. His council is objecting to a Derby Corporation plan to develop Castle Donington as a civil airport. Mr Sibson says: "We have seen a medical report proving that, in experiments, rats became infertile when subjected to normal airport noise. This could happen to our people and become a serious threat to future generations." So it looks as though the airport noise problem is going to solve itself after all. • From an article in The Service, Nigeria:—"You are thinking of going to the United Kingdom; you book your passagethrough a travel agency, and aimed with your ticket. The day arrives and you sitin a very comfortable chair in a Britannia Stratocruiser at the Ikeja International Air-port. You are already flying more than a million miles above the sea level and aftercovering about 4,000 miles you hear a voice . . ." As long as it isn't a hand on my shoulder. Anyway, the article goes on: "The average hours flown by Nigeria Airways' pilots are 8,000 hours a year." • Just announced by Thinx Aircraft Furnishings Ltd is a new range of feather beds, specially designed to replace the seats in airliner cockpits. A large demand is confidently expected, according to Sir Harold Digit-Smith, chairman of the Thinx group of companies. The feather beds are suitable for installation in most types of modern jet and turboprop airliner, and have what is described as an exceptional coefficient of comfort. Some airlines were at first opposed to their installa* tion, but all have now come round to "Nothing to beat this in any of Jules Verne's romances ..." See second story, col three "While Robinson is manicuring my toenails and Smith is brushing my hair, I would like you, Jackson, to get me a large fruit salad" accepting them as a logical develop- ment of the conventional pilot's seat. Very soon, said an airline spokesman last week, "our pilots will be completely featherbedded." • The first ideas about aircraft came not from men of science but from writers of fiction. They foresaw them not as vehicles of transport or as weapons of war, but as the means of having wonderful adventures. Today there is one writer at least who,is able to live what others of his calling could only dream. A Hiller press release informs me:—"America's most prolific author, and creator of Perry Mason—Erie StanleyGardner—has returned from an adventure- packed helicopter expedition into theunexplored canyons and mountains of Baja California."Using a Hiller 12E to get him into otherwise inaccessible terrain, Gardner andhis group of adventurers found palm- lined oases and underground rivers andstreams in arid wastes where no water was known to exist. In one remote area theyfound the remains of large buildings which could well be the fabled lost Mission ofSanta Isabel." There is nothing to beat that in any of Jules Verne's romances. The Hiller's perch seen in my picture is described by Mr Erie Stanley Gardner as "tame." Often, he says, the pilot would let down on "ridges so jagged that there was hardly a place to step out onto." • According to Chicago Helicopter Airways, passenger traffic carried in 1957 showed a 6,214 per cent increase on 1956. When did CHA start passenger services? On November 12, 1956. ROGER BACON
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