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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0644.PDF
As recorded last week, the Tokyo-based charter and air taxi company Fujita Airlines has ordered two 44-seat Fokker Friendship 200s. Signing the contract at Schiphol on April 9 was Mr I. Yamashita, president of Fujita (centre); on the left is Mr J. Gerritsen of Fokker. The first aircraft will be delivered in time for services to begin this summer and the second is due to be handed over next year AIR COMMERCE . . . Glaringly absent from these tables are the three independent charter accidents that have given rise to such concern, and which may well invalidate the first part of the foregoing quotation. It seems rather feeble to publish statistics which are more than a year out of date, excluding (though not, of course, deliber ately) three accidents which have substantially influenced the contents of the White Paper. A footnote to the original tables goes out of its way to point out the dangers of drawing deductions from accident statistics, in particular to any comparison between the corporations and the independents. "Comparison of accidents per stage flight," says the White Paper, "would be likely to show much less disparity between the corporations and the members of BIATA." All in all, the absence of the recent accidents from the tables, and what the Minis try describe as "the inadequacy of the basic statistics" about stage flights for independents, suggest the need for measures to tighten up the fullness and promptness of Ministry statistical analysis. The White Paper anticipates important changes in Britain's air safety legislation. Perhaps the most important is the proposal to set up (1) Review Tribunals, which can be requested by any party upon whom blame is put by a Ministry inspector's report, and (2) Appeal Boards to whom individuals whose licences the Minister has decided to revoke can turn. Both these changes are the result of Cairns Committee recommendations, and they will be welcomed (with Capt Thain in everyone's mind) as a typical British measure to care for the rights of individuals, especially those whose livelihoods are at stake. Another additional protection for individual rights will come from the removal of the question that is always put to the commissioner of a public inquiry: "Was the accident due to or contributed to by the wrongful act or default of any party?" The Caims report recommended that all reports by Ministry inspectors should be published, and that if they are not published they ought to be available on demand to any member of the public and that "they should be available as soon as possible after the accident and no avoidable delay should be tolerated." The White Paper says that since the Cairns Committee report "all inspec tors' reports have been published and it is intended to continue this practice except where security considerations prevent it, or where a foreign government is involved and does not agree." (The reports of the new review tribunals will, incidentally, be published subject to the same consideration.) Since about 90 per cent of all UK air transport, as the White Paper notes in another context, is overseas, this could always provide an excuse— if one were needed—for withholding or delaying publication of reports. Actually, so far as this journal is aware, only one inspector's report has been published since the Cairns report—that concern ing the Hermes 4 which overran at Southend in October 1960. Still not published is the report into the serious accident which occurred at London Airport to a BOAC 707, actually on the day that the Cairns Committee reported; and other accidents about which reports have not yet been published are: BOAC Comet 4, Rome, January 25, 1961; UAA Comet 4/TCA DC-8 near-miss, 642 FLIGHT International, 26 April 1962 London Heathrow, February 21; Cunard Eagle DC-6C, Shannon. March 26; Cunard Eagle Viking, Stavanger, August 9; Starways DC-4, Dublin, September 19; Derby Aviation DC-3, Perpignan, October 7; BK.S DC-3, Carlisle, October 17; British United Airways Viscount, Frankfurt, October 30; Silver City Bristol 170, Guernsey, November 1; BEA Comet 4B, Ankara, December 21; Caledonian Airways DC-7C, Douala, March 4, 1962. No report into any of these accidents, and only a brief Press statement about one of them, has so far been published. The implication of the White Paper is that the reports into all these accidents will be published. A whole section is devoted to the question of route competence (though this was not discussed by the Cairns Committee), but it does not indicate that any changes are to be made. Nor does the report indicate any new steps that are to be taken by the Government to make the installation of crash recorders mandatory, as it is in the USA; the Government is still "discussing with those concerned the terms of a requirement that certain classes of public transport aircraft" should be fitted with a crash recorder. No mention is made in the report of backward-facing seats. Other items of interest are: (1) standards for instructors are to be tightened, and as a first step towards securing uniformity of standards the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators [which examines instructors on the Ministry's behalf] will use the facilities of the College of Air Training at Hamble; (2) the proportion of would-be professional pilots passing Ministry examinations is very low—about 30 per cent for written and flying tests and about 10 per cent for instrument ratings; only AST at Perth and the College of Air Training have satisfied the Ministry's standards; (3) because of this heavy failure rate it is intended to raise fees for Ministry flying tests "substantially" very shortly; (4) anyone who wants to see the results of Ministry air traffic control censuses will be able to do so; (5) licensing of British Air Traffic Control officers will be required from August 1962; (6) a direct reading cloud base recorder has been installed at London Heathrow to provide continuous observation on the height of the cloud base. Perhaps the best sentence in this well-written White Paper is as follows (it is in the context of route competence): "77ie law is the same for all operators . . . and their responsibilities remain whatever checks the Ministry may make." BOAC AND AIR CEYLON CONTRARY to reports even from sources as reliable as Reuter, Air Ceylon has not joined the BOAC/Qantas/Air-India pool agreement. • A misconception appears to have arisen following the inauguration, on March 30, of Comet 4 services between London and Colombo operated by BOAC on behalf of Air Ceylon and in its own right. It will be recalled that Air Ceylon, following last year's rupture This is a new model of the Vickers VA.3 Hovercraft in the livery of British United Airways, who plan to use the VA.3 on the world's first scheduled hovercraft services in July between Hoylake and Rhyl, in co-operation with Vickers-Armstrongs (South Marstcn) Ltd
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