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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0820.PDF
818 FLIGHT lnternationw 24 May 196? Chief engineer of Bahamas Airways is Mr Jack Blitz (right), seen here at Nassau with one of the airline's two Viscount 702s. With him is Mr David Walker, Vickers' technical representative in Washington ::i„ir^9i$ix,': • ... BAL operate five DC-3s on island services, and two others belonging to a Miami firm are operated in BAL colours (US-registered) by contract pilots on services from Florida to Freeport. One of the five BAL aircraft will be sold if the Friendship deal goes through. This picture was taken at Andros Town The Goose never laid any golden eggs for BAL. Ironically enough, one of the first decisions of Air Cdre Powell—an ex-flying boat skipper—was to dispose of two of BAL's three boats. They were too costly to operate and maintain—corrosion being one of the biggest problems BAHAMAS AIRWAYS. are both coming up for the expensive spar-boom changes necessary on early production Viscount aircraft. Friendships, if the pro posed maintenance arrangement is ARB-approved, will provide BAL with a highly competitive aeroplane capable of both bush flying in and out of the rough airstrips in the Out Islands and of meeting heavy quality competition on the routes to Florida. In the conflicting demands of these different operations lies one of the main reasons for BAL's high costs. From the cockpit of the DC-3, in the course of some fairly concentrated island-hopping, I saw something of what I had heard about the Out Islands operations of Bahamas Airways. Every half hour, it seemed, I had to move my legs so that the co-pilot could get at the flap and undercarriage selectors. Average sector time is. in fact, just about half an hour, and average sector length only 72 miles. One co-pilot said he had done 146 take-offs and 146 landings in a recent 17-day period. "When I was with Airwork and Eagle," he said, "mostly on long-haul charter flying, I didn't do that many landings in six months." Of the 19 captains and six first officers, three—including the chief pilot, Capt P. E. Farrington—are Bahamanian; six are British, and the rest are Canadian, American and Australian. Captains earn up to £4,000 and co-pilots up to £2,575, with allowances for a car (£2 15s a week) and meals (about £3 a day). The pilots do an average of five hours' flying and eight landings a day, and they feel strongly that their utilization is as high as it could reasonably be considering the conditions. Significantly, the rate of pilot turnover is low, and the chief pilot's file of applications is thick. A Bahamas Airways pilot works hard (to an observably high standard); and he enjoys life in the Bahamas. He is not, it appears, one of the airline's big problems. Not, at any rate, as big a problem as the limited number of hours available for earning revenue. Only eight of the 23 Out Island strips have lighting, and the revenue-earning day is effectively limited to 10 hours—believed to be one of the lowest of any airline in the world. When we taxied in at Nassau, trundling after our long shadow from the setting sun, the skipper pointed to the four DC-3s, two Aero Commanders, one Goose and two Viscounts on the ramp and said: "Well there we are—the fleet's in port." Not surprisingly, fleet utilization is low—about l.OOOhr a year per DC-3 and Viscount. It could be higher, but only with night- shift overtime in the engineering department. "You want to axis) and Florida-Freeport (the up-and-coming international axis) with complete flexibility. At present twice-daily BAL DC-3 shuttles link Freeport with the three Florida fountainheads of its future wealth—Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. These services are still in the development stage, with load factors not yet touching the fifties. They are operated by two US-registered DC-3s in BAL colours chartered from Dupont, maintained by Airwork International in Miami, and flown by contract pilots in BAL uniform. This unusual though apparently quite successful arrangement may be continued, perhaps with more BAL emphasis, with the Friendships. Traffic on the Florida - Freeport route has, reports Air Cdre Powell, been a great success—"the services have achieved results I never thought possible." It will mean goodbye to the two Viscount 702s chartered in July 1961 from BOAC Associated Companies to replace the hopelessly uncompetitive Hermes introduced during the period of BAL's control by private enterprise in 1960. The Viscounts did much to restore BAL's morale and competitive position on the Florida route. But they proved to be economically beyond the company's as yet inadequate engineering organization; and, furthermore, they
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