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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0832.PDF
842 FLIGHT, 15 June AIR COMMERCE . . . OVERSEAS VISITORS TO SALISBURY THE Air Transport Licensing Board has heard British United'sapplication for a licence, at the request of Central AfricanAirways, for nine flights, one per month from July, 1961 to March, 1962, to carry members of the Overseas Visitors Club betweenSalisbury, Southern Rhodesia, and Southend in both directions. Mr Max Wilson, founder of the club, explained that the club wasa closed group providing accommodation and other amenities for its members. For the first two years of its existence it had no travelfacility, and this had been introduced at the suggestion of an air- line (unnamed) that the club might like to provide facilities formembers to book passages. Its membership did not exceed 20,000, and there were branches in various Commonwealth countries.The club catered for younger members of the community, many of whom would not be able to travel but for the club's facilities.Did this not tend to show that travel was a primary facility of the club? Mr Wilson replied that this was not so; members could nottravel under club auspices for the first six months of membership. Pressed further on the point that travel might be a primary objectof club membership, Mr Wilson was asked to explain an under- taking to make a refund on his subscription to any member whohad to cancel his trip. Mr Wilson replied that of the present membership of 16,000 he did not expect that more than 1,500 wouldtravel, by sea or air, an estimate that seems a little hard to reconcile with a Union Castle ship charter by the club on which 748 passen-gers were carried, and Mr Wilson's revelation that negotiations for four more ship charters during the off season were in hand.Clearly the Board wished to satisfy itself thoroughly that bulk travel is not a primary facility offered by the Overseas VisitorsClub. [Stop press: The application was granted.] THE BOARD'S NEW DEPUTY CHAIRMAN SINCE our note last week recording the appointment of Mr J. J.Taylor as a member of the Air Transport Licensing Board, theMinister, Mr Peter Thorneycroft, has confirmed that, as from August 1, Mr Taylor will be deputy chairman of the Board. Hesucceeds Mr A. H. Wilson, who has been filling the office on a temporary basis. Mr Wilson will remain a member of the Board.Mr J. J. Taylor is general manager and secretary of the Workers Travel Association, and an old hand in British air transport licensingaffairs, having been a member of the Air Transport Advisory Council from 1952. Mr Taylor's appointment as a member of theATLB took effect on June 1. SILVER TURNBUCKLE FOR HARDINGHAM MR R. E. HARDINGHAM, secretary and chief executive ofthe ARB, was presented with the Silver Turnbuckle award of the Society of Licensed Aircraft Engineers by the society's President,Mr I. J. Gregory, AFRAeS, chief maintenance engineer of BEA, at the society's 18th annual general meeting on June 3. Presented from time to time for outstanding services in aircraftengineering, the Silver Turnbuckle is the society's pre-eminent award, and comprises an authentically dimensioned Avro Turn-buckle fashioned in silver from the original drawings and mounted in a presentation case. The SLAE Gold Badge for 1960, awardedannually to the author (being a member) of the most meritorious paper published in the society's Journal, went to Mr P. Hobley,manager of the instrument services department of RCA Victor Ltd, Montreal, for a paper entitled "An Introduction to the Relia-bility Concept." The SLAE General Council is to proceed with the postal balloting necessary to reconstitute the society on April 1, 1962, as "The Society of Licensed Aircraft Engineers and Technologists." '61 •rY •'as rid it, us, De Kroonduif, KLM's associate in Dutch New Guinea, have taken df of a third Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer. A Series 3 aircraft, i, flown to Biak on June I. In the picture, left to right, are: H. G. Han N. J. Capper of Scottish Aviation; P. Rombouts, Civil Aviation Depart- Netherlands New Guinea; and Capt Ryswyk, E. W. Dunlop, J. H. (• J. Van Den Bos and H. Luschen, all of De Kroonduif ICAO's ALPHA PLUS T ATEST annual report of the International Civil Aviation Organization•*-' shows how an enterprise the size of a medium-sized charter operator and having no executive power, stands for law and order in a £2,000 maionindustry. THE early summer of each year sees the publication of a docu-ment which is as interesting and useful as any other in the grow- ing body of aviation literature—the annual report of the Counci ofICAO to the Organization's General Assembly. This report serves two quite separate purposes: on the one hand it offers the mostauthoritative and comprehensive account of the industry's recent progress; on the other hand, it gives a complete record ot theactivities of ICAO itself. The report itself is traditionally divided into eight chaptersfollowed by a few appendices relating mostly to the Organization's composition and internal arrangements. To the industry at largethe opening chapter is likely to be the best read, for it consists of 21 packed pages on the industry's development in 1960. Of theremaining seven chapters, the most important are those two which deal with the subjects closest to ICAO's heart—air navigation andtechnical assistance. Civil Aviation in 1960 This important chapter opens by observingthat 1960 was noteworthy in two particular respects. The year saw long-range routes taken over in the .main by jets. And as if thatwasn't enough for one year, 1960 also saw the industry starting to look seriously at the supersonic airliner. Traffic in 1960 increasedby 13.6 per cent over 1959, a rate which corresponded closely with the average over the past ten years—a rate equivalent to a doublingof traffic every six years. International traffic continued to expand faster than domestic (growth rates in 1960 of 21 and 9 per centrespectively), this trend resulting in a further increase in average passenger-haul to 640 miles. The slow domestic growth was largelyattributable to the lethargy in the North American economy: because of this, the share of world traffic carried by US airlinesdropped to below 60 per cent for the first time since World War II. Despite this substantial overall growth of traffic, load factorsfell sharply to the lowest level in the past decade—55.5 per cent. As ICAO forecast a number of years ago (to the annoyance ofmany governments and airlines) the advent of the jets was accom- panied by an over-abundance of capacity. This was even apparent onthe fastest-growing route of all, the North Atlantic, where air traffic climbed by 25 per cent to but a shade short of two millionpassengers. By comparison, the shipping total fell for the third successive year to about 870,000. Although average revenue ratesare estimated as having risen by almost 2 per cent to 52 pence per l.t.m. at a time when units were held constant at an estimated29 pence per c.t.m. (both figures being largely biased, of course, towards American domestic experience), the fall in load factor wasenough to drag the level of operating profit down to negligible proportions. In the absence of precise financial figures, the Organiza-tion calculates that the industry made a global operating profit of $57m (£20m) on revenues and expenditures that were respectivelyjust over and just under a figure of $5,000m. Not only from a financial viewpoint, but also in respect of safetyrates, 1960 marked a step backward rather than forward. Sched- Malayan interest in the Avro 748 is ex- emplified by this pic- ture of the Federation's Minister of Transport, the Hon Inche Sardon Bin Haji Jubir, at Manchester after a demonstration flight in the prototype. With him is Mr E. Galit- zine, Avro's sales manager (left) and ]. G. Harrison, Avro's chief test pilot (.right)
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