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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0538.PDF
546 FLIGHT, 20 April 1961 Dr Adenauer, the West German Chancellor, baptizes Lufthansa's first Boeing 720B at Frankfurt on April 11. Shortly afterwards the air- craft, "Bonn," flew him to Washington for his talks with President Kennedy AIR COMMERCE . . . that, unlike the unofficial 350,0001b DC-8A which was projected as a contender for the MATS big jet freighter contract, the DC-8F will not have a swing tail. Data are as follows:— Powerplant: Four Pratt & Whitney JT3D-3 turbofans of 18,0001bstatic thrust each. Dimensions: As DCS (see Flight, November 18, 1960, page 803).Weights: Maximum take-off, 310,0001b; payload (space-limited) with 54 passengers, and cargo at 101b per cubic foot, 62,6101b.Payload accommodation: Forward 60 per cent of the cabin, freight (up to 52,OOOlb); aft section, passengers (54). The freight compartmentwould have provision for nine 81in x 1 lOin freight pallets. AFTER THE CRASH SOME heart-searching must have been done by the Ministry ofAviation before it agreed to co-operate with the BBC in lastThursday's TV programme about investigating accidents. The subject is a "natural" for dramatization, but there is always thefear that the over-dramatization of disaster will raise unnecessary doubts about air safety. In the event the Accidents InvestigationsBranch probably felt quite relieved at the way the feature turned out. The accident involved a "Cardinal" aircraft which inexplicablywent in at the end of a GCA. Witnesses talked of "explosions" and "fire in the air"; the Ministry inspector's comment was to theeffect that witnesses' fire tales are usually fairy tales. The co-pilot survived (the captain died of his injuries) and spoke of "a bang"and of a "sharp bank to port" which he couldn't hold. Pilot- viewers will have been delighted at the heavy emphasis put on theblaming of pilots by accident investigators: "This is one they couldn't pin on us," the co-pilot remarked. But the Ministry teamseemed pretty well aware of this particular pilot prejudice, and in any case they found what they were after in the wreckage (orrather a Boy Scout did)—a flap bracket that had obviously suffered a fatigue failure. Passages were a bit theatrical—some of the remarks were notquite typical of real-life chief pilots, company safety officers, and senior ATCOs. But the script-writer, Wilfred Greatorex, did askilful job. His story seemed to have been largely inspired by the Viscount accident at Manchester in 1957. JAM YESTERDAY QHAREHOLDERS in the world's largest airline—and that, oftj course, is American Airlines until such time as United and Capital are finally merged—must feel like Alice in never being ableto enjoy jam today. Despite the great promises made a few years ago, when the first generation of jets was about to come into service,their investment has shown a steadily diminishing return. The main message of the recently published report for 1960 is to ask share-holders to wait patiently until the fan-engined second generation of jets gets into its stride. Even if they can find little evidence of improved earnings, share-holders can at least rejoice over the dominating position that their airline has achieved. To read through American's annual report isto venture into a world of genuine superlatives. Last year saw them selling services valued at as much as $428m(£153m). Their fleet numbered close on 200 aircraft. The number of staff at the year-end stood at 24,000. And the volume of theirtraffic over the year was equivalent to one-tenth of the total for all the world's airlines put together—or, expressed in another way,rather more than the total domestic and international traffic carried by all airlines within Europe. Despite their Olympian stature, American Airlines last year wereunable to fly above the financial turbulence that so troubled the industry as a whole. Although their revenues were up by 13 per cent,net profit was down from S21m to ?12m. Indeed, if the system of depreciation had not been changed (mainly in the form of anextension of estimated useful life of jet aircraft to 12 years), net profit would have been reduced by a further million dollars. Theexplanation for this does not require much seeking; seat load factor toppled from 70 to 65 per cent. Reduced load factors were, of course, a prominent feature of theNorth American industry as a whole last year (the average fell below 60 per cent for the first time since 1949). This resulted from anunfortunate contraction in the national economy at a time when substantial fresh capacity from new jet fleets was becoming available.As American's report declares: "A high percentage of [our] traffic comes from business travel." American Airlines feel that thepolicies adopted by the regulatory authority have not made life easier in this respect: "All of the industry, including American,continues to suffer from the effect of too much parallel duplicating airline service authorized by the CAB." Another problem which must have affected American's loadfactor, although no reference is made to it in the report, was the speed restriction and adverse publicity suffered by the LockheedElectra last year (American has 33 aircraft of this type). If load factors had not fallen, American's results would have been gratify-ing; revenue rates were up slightly and unit costs were down (from 31 to 30 cents per c.t.m.). An important factor behind this cost-reduction was the high utilization of the company's 34 Boeing 707s —up from 7hr 45min in 1959 to 9hr 27min in 1960. Although the net return on investment dropped to as low as 6 percent in the case of American last year, the average for all the trunk operators is estimated to have fallen as low as 3 per cent. American'spolicy towards retiring used aircraft has played a significant part in achieving their above-average record, for not only does this com-pany continue to make a profit on the sale of used equipment (albeit less in 1960 than in 1959), but the rate of retirement has beensuch that "American does not now have any idle aircraft in storage (and) all of those available for delivery have been sold." Looking at the future, the report concentrates entirely on theAstrojet, the name coined to describe American's fan-powered Boeing 707s and Convair 990s. The sceptical shareholder readingabout this generic equipment might be excused for recalling the good old DC-6 days when American's net return on investmentstood as high as 13 per cent. Alice would have sympathized with him. BACK TO CIAMPINO? OPERATIONS from Rome's new international airport atFiumicino are not to be suspended as a result of subsidence ofthe main runway, but this runway, 12,990ft, has been out of service for repairs for two weeks. During this time the secondary 8,630ft runway (6,100ft serviceable) has been used. As reported in Flight for January 20, one of the many criticisms of the new airport is that it is built on unstable land, and the main runway continues to crack and subside despite repairs. It will be open again tomorrow, April21, butforonly 85 percent of its length. Italian workmen are seen here at work on repairs to the main runway at Fiumicino, which, it is reported in a note on this page, is continuing to suffer from subsidence troubles. Complete sec- tions of concrete ore being removed, the soil com- pacted, and the concrete renewed
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