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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0712.PDF
722 FLIGHT, 25 Ma 1961 AIR COMMERCE. . . SUPERSONICS IN RETROSPECT Having digested the mass of facts and opinions offered at last month'sI AT A Symposium on Supersonic Transport in Montreal, an indepen- dent technical observer who was present looks back at the meetingand offers his assessment of what was accomplished. The symposium is reported in some detail on pages 727-729 of this issue. THE supersonic-transport symposium was skilfully organizedand documented, with over a thousand pages of thoughtful and competent working papers, and the collective cost to the air-line industry exceeded $100,000 per day. Even so, the objectives of the meeting were necessarily limited. No manufacturer is likelyto offer the fruits of costly secret research to his competitors. Airlines have no such restraint in stating their operational require-ments; but the manufacturers have learned that what an airline puts into operation bears little relation to the requirement it statedten years before. The most immediate value of such a conference is that it discoversthe questions for which we have no answer. Foremost among these emerged the sonic boom, overshadowing even the question of whois to pay for a supersonic transport. NASA has undertaken to provide answers to the questions: "How big will the bang be?" and"How big a bang is tolerable ?" No organization is more competent than NASA to attempt to answer the first question, but its answerto the second may not command confidence. The optimistic can- vassing of solutions involving "public education" not only strucka disagreeably Orwellian note, but was out of touch with real life. As an English voice remarked: "Perhaps the education should bedirected at the manufacturers, the airlines and the administrations, in that order." It is one thing to have succeeded in imposing loudand disagreeable noises on the small minority who live near major airports; it is quite another to "educate" tens of millions of Euro-peans and North Americans to accept sudden loud bangs (and perhaps even the occasional broken window) as a routine of dailylife in city and hamlet. The supersonic transport is simply not that important, and neither is the airline industry. The unansweredquestions on sonic booms prejudiced many other discussions. It is difficult, for example, to determine optimum design-range for avehicle which, conceivably, may not be able to cruise in its design condition over land. On technical questions generally there was much valuable meet-ing of minds—with the exception of the navigation-ATC-communi- cations discussions, which took place in the usual vacuum. Thiswas the fault of neither the participants nor the organizers; de- signers, navigators and controllers are each separately thinking ofthe optimum design of the component of a system which does not itself exist. The plea for "system design" made by Flight a year agowas forcibly re-stated by one of the airlines, but the most convincing argument was the discussion on navigation itself. At one pointthe Decca/VOR controversy flared suddenly into life, to be quickly extinguished by a vigilant chairman; nevertheless, one of the fewclear things about supersonic navigation is the inadequacy of the ICAO short-range navigational aid plan. The pleasant new extension to the term/no/ buildings at Elmdon Airport, Birmingham, opened by the Duchess of Kent on April 28. Floor covering is by Carpet Trades of Kidderminster. It would have been unwise to speculate on the know-how jf tnedifferent manufacturers; they all knew more than they were Hlin EStill, one wonders which manufacturer would be most lik tv to obtain US government support to build a supersonic trar portDouglas has been the leading name in air transportation for a quarter of a century; Boeing has recently emerged as the lea ler injet transport; Convair has the vast resources of General Dynamics and the supersonic experience of the B-58; North American uouldclaim that B-70 system-responsibility makes it the most qualified despite lack of civil experience; Lockheed make a case too. ' A most encouraging event, even out of the context of the meetingwas the discussion on ground handling and facilitation. One can hope that the relative neglect of this subject, so important to thepassenger, is at last at an end. Anyone who expected the symposium to write a specificationmust be sadly disappointed. This was never the object. The meeting was an invaluable service to the aviation industry; all concerned—airlines, manufacturers and governments—must now have a clearer idea of where they stand. Where they are going is, of course, quite another matter. Thedifficulties to be overcome are so formidable that only the airline industry, which during the past 30 years has repeatedly achievedthe apparently impossible, could continue to consider its feasibility. Nevertheless, most airlines will feel that the prospect of supersonictransport is less immediate, and the possibility of another subsonic generation will not be escaping attention. PLENTY OF SEATS TO SOUTH AFRICAT EN airlines now operate from Johannesburg to Europe—theSpringbok partners (BOAC, South African Airways, Central African Airways and East African Airways), KLM, Alitalia, UAT,Scandinavian, El Al, and the South African independent Trek' Another independent, associated with the UK company OverseasAviation and with the UK Overseas Visitors' Club, is Trans Africa Air Coach, which picks up South Africans in Louren^o Marques.Operators out of Jan Smuts Airport offer 21 flights a week, and the Springbok partnership alone has 13. The foreign carriers have quotas below the capacity of theiraircraft. KLM's Johannesburg quota is 100 passengers a week and the South African Government recently refused to increase it.Alitalia's quota was recently raised from 100 to 140 a week and UAT's from 60 to 88. It appears that the South African Govern-ment is being less restrictive towards carriers of countries that have something to offer in return: Rome is an important stop on theSpringbok service, and the French have influence among African nations of the French community, and it is obviously worth SouthAfrica's while to keep them as sweet as possible. As on the North Atlantic route, group charter operations toSouth Africa are expanding. The Travellers' Facilities Club, which flies out immigrants in charter aircraft and takes travellers toEurope, averages 65 passengers a week. The Overseas Visitors' Club and TAAC, using charter aircraft to and from Louren^oMarques—each with one monthly service—add a further 35 a week on average. This makes a total of 1,820 seats. The numberwill rise by about 56 in mid-July when Trek Airways fly Con- stellations (hired from South African Airways) three times a month. The Overseas Visitors' Club has almost concluded negotiationswith Central African Airways to hire aircraft giving single fares between London and Salisbury of about £90. South Africans willhave to get to Salisbury—at £21 single. This club has made an interim arrangement under which it will be provided with oneaircraft in April, one in May and one in June—with discussions pending on how many will be available later. Trek Airways—if the South African National Transport Com-mission approves—will hire redundant SAA Constellations (Flight. March 10) and cut return fares between Johannesburg andEurope to £200. Trek is a German-South African financed non- scheduled airline, which enjoys official approval. It operates 52DC-4 flights a year, each with seats for 66. Four extra seats are to be fitted. Trek has applied to charter three South African Air-ways 70-seater Constellations to provide 36 more flights a year- three a month. These services would bring Trek's links withEurope to 88 a year. Trek, with seven flights a month and 122 seats a week, would do more business from Johannesburg toEurope than old-established lines like KLM, UAT and SAS. Its application to the National Transport Commission was supportedby South African Airways, which is embarrassed by the unused Constellations. These expensive but obsolescent airliners standin the hangars at Jan Smuts Airport. Although the deai with Trek has not yet been concluded. South African Airways engineersand trimmers are already refurbishing the airliners. The National Transport Commission's decision on Trek's deal with SouthAfrican Airways has been delayed because the commission v anted written details of proposed fares. It is expected that single faresbetween South Africa and Europe will be £78 10s in the off ?:ason and £94 in season. There will be no night stops. Trek wii; con-tinue its DC-4 services with frequent night stops at cut-rases ot £105 single and £200 return.
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