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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1567.PDF
FLIGHT, 26 October 1961 671 SIR WILLIAM HILDRED REPORTS THE 17th Annual General Meeting of 1ATA opened in Sydney lastMonday. The Australian Prime Minister, Mr R. G. Menzies, and the Minister of Transport, Mr S. Paltridge, attended the session on Mondayat which Sir Hudson Fysh, chairman of Qantas, took office as president of 1ATA. A review of the meeting, which ends tomorrow, October 27,will appear in later issues. Meanwhile the report of Sir William P. Hildred, IATA'S director general, is summarized here. "Tir 7ITHIN the last three years," says Sir William Hildred, "air-\/\ line expenditures on landing fees alone have increased by ' " one-half as against a rise of only one-third in total opera-ting costs." Rising government charges for landing and navigation facilities are, he says (beating an old 1ATA drum harder than ever),making lower fares more difficult. He estimates that the landing fees paid by scheduled airlines are almost three times their operatingmargin of $57m (approximately £20.4m) before taxes. Citing "a depressing number of individual cases of increased charges," hesingles out the UK and Canada for particular criticism. The most damaging charge of all for the industry as a whole was, he says, the331 per cent increase in landing fees imposed by the Ministry of Aviation. Sir William refers to his visit to the Minister of Aviationand his appearance before a Parliamentary select committee. He says that the Minister applauded IATA's consistent policy of tryingto produce low fares, and gave it his blessing. He then proceeded to make it impossible by putting up his charges by another £2m. 1ATA is not opposed to landing fees. Sir William points out. TheAssociation has long accepted them as a normal cost of operation. "We are," he says, "willing to pay our fair share of airport costs.But we maintain that it is unfair to hold us solely responsible for providing them, as some governments would have it." Sir William emphasizes, not for the first time, that airlines are notthe sole users and beneficiaries of airports, neither are passengers who often pay their share as well through passenger service charges.As regards airport costs, he points out that the airlines have no control over the nature of the facilities provided and are allowed togive precious little advice to the authorities. "In many places," he asserts, "air terminals have been constructed not merely to serve air SLUSH ON TEST "pESTS have recently been conducted by America's FAA toJ. collect information on the retardation effects on take-off performance of slush and water. The FAA asked Britain's Depart-ment of Scientific and Industrial Research, who have been conduct- ing tests of a similar nature, to send out a team to assist in the trials.The DSIR team took with them their high-speed trailer (with a Jaguar for towing purposes) which measures slipperiness on therunway at speeds of up to 120 m.p.h. The trailer unit was originally designed to study friction problems on wet surfaces. Assistancewas also given by the American NASA. The tests were conducted at the FAA experimental centre,Atlantic City, and the aircraft used was the Agency's recently acquired Convair 880M equipped with special tyres. With a teststrip measuring 1,000ft •: 50ft covered with slush up to 2in deep, and a 2,000ft braking strip covered with slush, foam and standingwater, the aircraft made power-off deceleration runs at different speeds. Take-offs were also made from slush-covered strips atvarying weights, as well as braking tests at different speeds over a variety of surfaces. The pronounced retarding effect of slush is said to have sur-prised FAA officials. In one test the 880 was accelerated to lOOkt, then steered at take-off power through a strip of pulverized ice lindeep and 3,000ft long. The aircraft could not attain rotation speed of 124kt until just before it cleared the slush pack. VANGUARD'S FIRST SIX MONTHS T^EN of BEA's Vanguards have now been delivered. Since they1 went into service with BEA some six months ago each has been flying at an average rate of l,564hr a year. The corporation'schairman, Lord Douglas, writes in the current issue of BEA Magazine that Vanguard utilization should increase rapidly oncethe initial teething troubles are over, and as soon as the Tyne's low- overhaul life is increased.The Vanguard teething troubles to which the chairman refers This recent photogroph of Dublin Airport shows the extended main instrument runway (06/24) in the background. This runway, 7,000ft x 200ft, will probably be lengthened to 10,000 ft during the next few months. The almost-completed pier projects 200ft on to the apron. An unusual sight is all three Aer Lingus 720s on the ground traffic, but to advertise the prestige of the country or locality or tosatisfy the artistic imagination of an ambitious architect Certain administrations have made it clear that one way or another theyexpect to collect from the airlines the full capital cost of their air- ports—marble, mosaic, chrome trim, gold door-knobs and all."In fairness. Sir William adds that some governments have been more realistic, and charge to recover the operating costs of the airports—anticipating only a partial eventual recovery of the capital cost. In his report Sir William says that, from the financial point ofview, I960 appears to have been worse than 1959. World airline operating revenues for 1960 were S5,5O5m as against expendituresof S5,448m. which leaves a margin of 1 per cent (or i-57m) before payment of tax and interest. "This margin is just ridiculous tomeet the demands of a growing industry or the pressures of rising costs," Sir William says, adding that the financial situation of theindustry is precarious and "an affront to commonsense." Sir William comments on the supersonic transport as "the nextastounding technical challenge on our horizon." The development of a supersonic transport now seems inevitable, he says, because ithas become a matter of declared national prestige for governments. "Any type of supersonic transport will be expensive beyond allprevious experience in aviation. It would be utterly beyond the capability of either airlines or manufacturers to finance its develop-ment." If governments, as they had indicated, wished to recover their investment through the selling price to the operator, "this maybe salvation for the manufacturer but fatal for the airline." In his summing up Sir William says: "This has been a turbulentyear of transition." He points out that there will probably be several more such years ahead, though he remains optimistic aboutthe future. He emphasizes that the time it will take to get through the rough patch, and "the state in which we emerge from it dependsonly partially on our own efforts." He counsels the airlines to concentrate their efforts on reducing fares, because lower pricing isthe key to the industry's future. He asks for the co-operation of governments who control large areas of airline costs. have been the subject of numerous rumours and newspaper reports.Lord Douglas does not comment adversely on the aircraft or its engines, and refers to the low engine overhaul life as "inevitableduring the first months with an entirely new type of engine." The president of Trans-Canada Air Lines, Mr G. R. McGregor,however, has seen fit to refer less kindly to his airline's experience of Vanguard teething troubles. In an article in the Toronto Tele-gram he is reported as saying that initial Vanguard services gave "a most unsatisfactory account of themselves .. . they suffered fromeven more exasperating mechanical [delays] than might be reason- ably expected of a new type. There have been numerous minordeficiencies and two major ones—the noise and the vibration level in the forward compartment is unacceptably high. So is the numberof unscheduled engine removals due to mechanical faults." A spokesman for Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft) says that thecauses of all delays and unserviceability are fully understood and that modifications have been developed and are being embodied.
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