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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1389.PDF
JGHT, 21 September 1961 493 Correspondence 7 te Editor of " Flight" is no? necessarily in agreement with the views . .pressed by correspondents in these columns. Names and addresses of i nYery, not for publication in detail, must in all cases accompany letters. ATLB Hearings: a US Reaction | T may be of interest to you to hear some transatlantic reactionsI to your reports of the ATLB public meetings. I have become an ;ivid reader of these accounts, and find them extremely entertainingat the same time that they are revealing. It strikes me that British commercial aviation affairs have come to a devilish odd state.As someone in the hearings remarked, there is a coloured gentleman in the woodpile somewhere, and a dark one at that. First, while the Act is supposedly designed to help Britishaviation, the only positive result I have noticed to date is that just down the road the fellows at Boeing are now selling 707s to twoBritish lines instead of one. Also conspicuous at Renton is a glittering 707 for Ubangi Airlines' new New York - Timbuktuservice via London. Then, in the midst of the barrage of applications for scheduledservices from the independents (once, I believe, usually called "the charter companies"), comes the announcement that thenational scheduled airline has earned a cool 4.7m pounds on charter business! Equally remarkable, it seems, is the arrangement wherebya one-time "charter company" operates L-749 cargo services for BOAC, while the latter flies charter—yet also flies some cargoservices with DC-7Fs. Standardization ? * On the topic of equipment, I thought it rather poor taste for theoperator of non-pressurized, war-surplus DC-3s and DC-4s (even if the latter do have LST doors welded on the front) to refer tosomeone else's pressurized, post-war Hermes as '"old-fashioned tricycles." This is particularly nasty when you happen to havesold them these same airplanes (and I believe Airwork, now BUA, didseW Silver City these very Hermes). Surely it is only in England that hearings of this sort could bepunctuated by incidents like the one involving "Mr Mekie's bread." 1 hope the hearings are ultimately as beneficial as they now appearwitty. Seattle, Wash PETER J. READ Overseas Aviation and the Board IN your recent leading article about "The Independents' PublicImage" (August 24) you were, I think, rather unfair to the Air Transport LicensingBoard. You said that Overseas Aviation (CI) Ltdwent into liquidation within a fortnight of inaugurating an air service duly licensed by the Board, and that the Board had "conspicuouslyfailed in its duty" to satisfy itself about the airline's financial resources. The licence to which you were referring was presumably for theshort-lived service Gatwick-Manchester-Prestwick; in fact, this was a "transitional" licence issued by the Minister on the recom-mendation of the old Air Transport Advisory Council. It is true that the Board had issued Overseas a small number of other licencesfor inclusive-tour charters and so on, but not one for a scheduled service. There is no doubt that the Overseas affair has broughthome to everyone the importance of the need to ensure that applicants for new services have the resources to carry them out.and I think we will find that the Board is well aware of this point. Paris 16e R. PRIEFF-SMITH U-2 Close-up THE enclosed photographs [reproduced above—Ed] of a Lock-heed U-2 may interest you. This aircraft was photographed by me at Nadi, Fiji, as it passed through on its way to the USAfrom conducting upper-air sampling tests from Sale in Victoria, Australia. The sampler box can be seen (in the side-view) under the airintake and offset to port. Note that this aircraft has pinion fuel tanks fitted for extra-long-range cruising. It was one of threebased at Sale. They were escorted by four RB-57Bs and supported ty a flock of Globemasters. The original negatives are Koda-color, which unfortunately causes a slight loss of definition when printed black and white. This aircraft was painted mid-grey,whereas the other two were polished metal and did not have pinion anks. Darling Point, NSW N. B. WILTSHIRE The two U-2 photographs referred to by Mr N. B. Wiltshire Independents in the News AS a regular air traveller I have been most interested to see howevery unfortunate incident—however trivial—involving anindependent airline comes under the spotlight of publicity, yet the delays and indifferent service of the State-owned airlines hardlyever seem to warrant a comment. 1 suppose the reason must be that it is, of course, not news whenthe nationalized airlines make a hash of things—because this is what air travellers in Britain have come to expect as "the norm."Cobham, Surrey ALLAN ROBLRTSON [BEA's regularity in 1960-61—the proportion of flights completedto flights scheduled—was 97.2 per cent, and 77.8 per cent of all their flights arrived punctually. BOAC's regularity in the same period was98.1 per cent. The independents do not publish figures for regularity or punctuality—Ed.] More Veterans for Farnborough? LIKE thousands of others, I was delighted to see the SE5A atFarnborough this year. I wonder if your printing an earlierletter of mine had anything to do with it ? Next year should be a great one with all the new machines, andif the Shuttleworth Trust and the Royal Aero Club and others were to exhibit their historic aircraft in a separate static park, andwere later to fly the airworthy examples—making a small extra charge of say, a shilling—1 am sure that at least 100,000 of the300,000 visitors would pay just to get near them. This would mean £5.000 of revenue and a lot of pleasure to a lot of people. Emsworth, Hants F. HONEY R/T Patter FROM the preliminary report on a recent serious airlineraccident it seems possible that the use of the word "Roger"may have made the exact position of the aircraft even more un- certain. The methods of use of this word by professional pilotsmake one wonder just how many appreciate that it is, in fact, an abbreviated way of saying "Your last transmission or messagereceived and understood." Yet we still hear "That is Roger" instead of "'That is correct," or the reply "Roger" in answer tosome query when the individual concerned presumably means "Affirmative." Then there is the "Roger Wilco" addict, whoobviously doesn't know the real meaning of either word. A more serious howler comes from the fellow who calls (forexample) "Chepstow this time," forcing the airways controller to look up at his clock (thereby increasing his workload) and makingthe time, say, 00.33. The chances are that Chepstow was, in fact, passed at 00.31, a couple of minutes having elapsed during theadjustment of ETAs and headings. The required time-separation between aircraft may not be there, and the fact that the one behind
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