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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 1067.PDF
FLIGHT International, 5 July 1962 19 pace. Mr Hardingham agreed that they were finding it more and more necessary to co-operate with their counterparts overseas but he thought that the only organization which could call a halt in re-equipment was, probably, LATA. Sir William Hildred of IATA, was, however, by no means optimistic. " People flock to a new aircraft," he said; moreover, re-equipment was "the very heart of management" and not a responsibility of the director-general of 1ATA. SIR MILES THOMAS: "It is now becoming axiomatic, even with young executives, that a man who has just flown three or four thousand miles should have at least one night's static rest before he can operate at maximum business efficiency. . ." Of course, it may be a little naive to think that our affairs on this planet can be arranged on a sensible basis. And it may be difficult to appreciate that civil air transport can more usefully be developed if long-term public interest overrides short-term competitive advantage. But I still think that the competitors, airline operators and aircraft constructors, or their respective national Ministers, would find it worthwhile at this point of time to get together and take stock. They might find, for example, that the best interests of civil aviation would be served if the money spent on research and development was deployed a little differently. It is possible that we should be pursuing quite different lines of inquiry. Sir Miles Thomas was convinced that we needed more original thinking in basic design, and thought a double-decker fuselage might conceivably be the answer to the low-fare problem. Lord Douglas agreed that "one could visualize an aircraft designed primarily for really cheap travel." Lord Brabazon went further, saying that too much effort had gone on speed and too little on safety and on the development of a really "popular good machine flying the mass of the public." H.P., as one would have expected, asked for "something simple," and got very cross with those who OP CAPT JOHN CUNNINGHAM: ". . . / would like to see more effort put into reducing take-off and landing speeds." clamoured for supersonic aircraft when so much research was still needed in other fields. Sir William Hildred may well be right that passengers flock to new type aircraft, but they will be passengers simply transferring their allegiance from one machine to another. Over the world's routes as a whole, I suspect that more people are introduced to air travel, and far more really new traffic is generated, by the old, amortized aircraft flying more slowly at cheaper fares. And if it is stable employment in the aircraft industry we are concerned about, then Mr Jenkins' ASSET members must realize that the ultimate guarantee can come only from expanding traffic. Which means that ASSET'S impatient propaganda for civil supersonic aircraft may not be in the best interest of their members. When H.P. said "forget Ferraris and Maseratis and come down to the equivalent of the Mini-minor or the Green Line coach," he was pleading for the type of aircraft which could provide far more employment than the supersonic machine for as far in the future as will concern the majority of ASSET'S present members. Lord Brabazon said, "It shocks me that a machine like the Vanguard jis not going on." When one thinks of the huge capital expenditure on the Vanguard jigs and tools one must share that shock. A really long manufac- SIR WILLIAM HILDRED : "... a passenger can now expect to fly 15 million miles before he kills himself." turing run on one good sound aircraft, with the economies of mass production passed on, would surely benefit air transport more than a competitive race to get new equipment to cut flying time by a matter of minutes. But probably such economic planning is not for this (western) world. One factor in aircraft safety which received significant attention was that of landing speeds. Lord Brabazon wanted a wider separa tion between stalling and flying speeds. Mr Hardingham wanted any further extension in the speed range to apply to the bottom as well as the top end of the range. He made the very cogent point that an aircraft which could fly slower would not only be safer on landing but would also have added ability to avoid storms and ride out turbulence. Mr Tye thought that technical developments round the corner, such as power assisted lift, might make possible the virtue of high cruising speed without high landing speed. And Gp Capt John Cunningham seemed confident that if part of the millions now "going down the drain on various projects" could be put into full-scale flight development work on modern jet trans ports, then something could be done about reducing take-off and landing speeds whilst retaining high cruising speed qualities. MR F. A. LAKER: ". . . it is very, very difficult to have a wide difference of safety as between the smaller companies and the biggest.' Why hasn't something been done? Have operators agitated nearly so hard for this kind of development as they did for extra concrete to cope with longer landing runs of their faster new machines? I doubt it. Has IATA ever looked at such a possibility as this nearly so closely as they have studied restrictive agreements on fares? I am not aware of it. Is the Ministry of Aviation asking for such work to be done? In all the impressive detail of their Command Paper 1695 there is no word to suggest that such is the case. Yet in the section on accident analysis the White Paper says "it is well known that these (landings and take-offs) are potentially the more dangerous phases of flight." Ought it not to have been the responsibility of someone to have ensured that an adequate proportion of our effort in research and development went on the sort of work which John Cunningham wanted ? Inevitably there was some discussion of the comparative safety records of the corporations and independent companies. Lord Douglas said quite bluntly "the public's concern is a result of recent accidents to charter operations." Sir Miles Thomas re marked, "the more knowledgeable people will steer clear of some of these charter operations." Mr Laker, on the other hand, did not accept this opinion at all, saying it was "very, very difficult to have a wide difference of safety," because all operators were covered by the same legislation. I pressed Mr Laker as to whether he would draw a distinction in this safety matter between the large independents and the small, and although he is now the executive head of the largest independent he very warmly championed the cause of the smaller operators. The point he made about the immediate personal supervision exercised by a chief pilot in a small company, as against the paper instructions in a big organiza tion, was a valid one. But I must say I remain unconvinced by this argument that all
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