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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0570.PDF
580 FLIGHT, 27 April 1961 AIR COMMERCE . . . E FOR EVERYTHING?F OR what is an E licence a licence? Doubts about the answerto this question caused eight operators to object, initially at any rate, to BEA's application to the Air Transport LicensingBoard for an E licence for helicopter operations in the United Kingdom. Eventually—having been reassured by BE A thatnothing sinister was afoot—seven of the eight objectors withdrew prior to the hearing before the Air Transport Licensing Board. The definition of an E licence is a "licence for an air transportservice which is not restricted to flights between specified places." The idea is to enable operators to run services, charter or scheduled,in a broadly defined geographical area at short notice. Obviously there are huge opportunities here for abuse, and the Board willhave to keep an eye on the activities of E licence holders (it has already issued a considerable number of transitional E licences). After operating for a year a Boeing 707-320 on lease from Pan Americ n, seen here, Pakistan International Airlines have decided to buy three 72OBs. The first of these is due to be delivered in December 1961 and the others in late 1962 BEA explained to the Air Transport Licensing Board at a rect nthearing that they want to operate short-term charters and joy rices with helicopters. Mr John Seekings of BEA said that althoughmost of BEA's helicopter services are exempted from the Ait, because they start and finish at the same point (without an inter-mediate landing) or because they are chartered to a sole user, a small number of requests come forward—often at short notice—for flights which would normally require a C licence (or, very occasionally, a B or a D licence). The sort of services required would be: (1) joy rides with an inter-mediate landing; (2) short-term group charters; (3) short series of flights available to the general public on occasions such as Silver-stone, Farnborough, Ascot, British Industries Fair, etc. Jersey Airlines, the surviving objector, dissented on the groundsthat the proposed service would not comply with the spirit and letter of the operating agreement between Jersey Airlines andBEA. Having heard the discussions between the Board and BEA about certain limitations acceptable to BEA, Jersey Airlines with-drew. These limitations briefly were: (1) the licence to be limited to a seven-year period; (2) no series of flights to last longer than amonth; (3) no flights to be represented as scheduled, or advertised. At this particular hearing the Board seemed to unsettle both theapplicant and the objector by interruptions, and there would seem to be an argument for an accepted routine at hearings. The Boardwas evidently uneasy about the limitation and control of the class E licence, as transitional licences of this class have already beenissued to cover group charters as defined in the official regulations. It seems difficult to understand why BEA did not similarly restricttheir application unless, in fact, they want to do something more than just avoid the necessity for repeated applications to the Board. Furthermore it seemed a pity to some observers at the hearingthat BEA should have chosen, as examples of the sort of public meetings that they are trying to cover, events like Farnborough andAscot, which are long-standing dates on the calendar and for which individual application could easily be made. The thoughtalso occurred that joy rides with intermediate stops could con- ceivably be expanded into a multi-centre circular tour with stop-overs in London or at provincial centres long enough to enjoy the sights. BREVITIES RAE-type visual guide path indicators are to be installed at EntebbeAirport, Uganda, and Nairobi Airport. Kenya. A 12,000ft runway is to be built at Dacca in East Pakistan so thatjets can be used on services between East and West. Air-India are to introduce six more weeklyiBoeing 707 services betweenPrague and New York. The number of passengers who travelled to Jersey by sea in 1960 was133,674 compared with 161,216 in 1959—a drop of 17 per cent. Air passengers rose 18 per cent from 276.849 to 326.237. Mr Gerald Gardiner, QC, has been retained by British United torepresent the independent at hearings before the Air Transport Licensing Board. A contract between the Government of Jamaica and InternationalAeradio for the supply of six ATCOs has been renewed for a period of two years and extended to cover three further officers. Starting in June. El Al will supplement its Britannia service toLondon with Boeing 707-420s, operating five round trip jet flights a week between London and Tel Aviv. An informal agreement between BUA and BEA, whereby the latterwould lease land at Gatwick to the independent, will not be completed. The corporation, it is understood, intends to develop the land itself. Following the discovery of a fault, since corrected, in the Vanguard'spressurization system, it was decided that the Queon and the Duke of Edinburgh will use a BEA Cornet 4B instead of a Vanguard for thestart of their Italian tour on April 29. The US cabotage route to Puerto Rico will be all-jet on April 30,when Pan American start to schedule 62 jet flights per week between New York and San Juan. The fare on these flights will be £19 13s, whichfor the 1,600-mile trip works out at less than 4d per mile. A new wholly-owned subsidiary of British United Airways is AirworkInternational Ltd, a merger of the former overseas division of Airwork and the helicopter division of British United. In its turnAirwork International will have a number of wholly-owned sub- sidiaries, one of which is Bristow Helicopters (Eastern) Ltd. Today. April 27, the Air Transport Licensing Board is to hold itsseventh public meeting. Inclusive tours applied for by Maitland Drewery and Skyways Coach-Air are being objected to by, respectively.Skyways Coach-Air and Cunard Eagle. Yesterday the Board resumed its hearing into BEA's application for freight commodity rates, opposedby British Railways, between Birmingham and Scotland. Work on the new terminal building at Prestwick is to start in twomonths' time; it should be completed by the summer of 1963. According to Interavia, SAS has sold a DC-6B to Kar-Air O/Y ofHelsinki, three others to UAA, and three also to REAL. Aviation Daily reports that American Airlines has sold five of its33 Lockheed Electras to REAL, and two DC-6s (for delivery on May 1 to Nord-Air of Copenhagen. A new runway to handle the largest jet airliners is to be built atLuanda, Portugese Angola, to enable TAP to operate jets between Lison, Angola, and Mozambique. Mr V. R. Pitcher has been elected executive secretary and Mr F. S.Tanner executive treasurer of the International Airline Navigators Council. Both are senior BOAC navigators. A new development in the Bahamas (see note on page 545 last week)is Pan American's announced intention to purchase a 30 per cent interest in the as-yet unformed inter-island Royal Bahamian Airways. A new DC-8 order is announced by Douglas; seven additional DC-8-5Os have been bought by National Airlines, to bring their total fleet to ten. The CAB said recently that its offices have been flooded with foreignairlines' "Statement of Position" documents challenging the legality of the CAB's order in January that freight and passenger statistics shouldbe made available to them. A Viscount of MEA was damaged in flight on March 29 when,according to Lloyd's List, "the door pressure release component came adrift in flight and struck the starboard leading edge inboard of No. 3engine." Runway extension work at Manchester Ringway is now completeand BOAC is to resume 707 movements through the airport en route for the USA on May 1. BOAC services were temporarily withdrawnlast February. Early in June Overseas Aviation will inaugurate a scheduled servicefrom London Gatwick to Manchester and Prestwick operating 48-seat Ambassadors. From the airline also comes news of a new appointment:Mr D. Willis becomes operations manager in succession to Mr G. P. L- Dunstone. Danish Air Charter will not begin operations with Viscounts leasedfrom Maitland Drewery, as previously reported, but will do so with Viscount 708s bought from Air France. The Danish operator's execu-tives are as follows: O. Norbye, president; J. A. Daniels, general manager; T. Lund-Hansen, operations manager; L. Skov, stationmanager.
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