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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 2389.PDF
630 FLIGHT International 18 October ]%2 The second VCIO, G-ARVA—the first for ROAC—was rolled out at Weybridge on Sunday, October 7, in readiness for engine-running and pre-flight checks. It will shortly be joining the first aircraft, G-ARTA, in the flight test programme from Wisley. The first VCIO has made 47 flights totalling nearly 70 hours Al R COMMERCE ... GOODBYE TO CUNARD EAGLE'S BOEING AS already reported, Cunard Eagle's VR-registered Boeing 707 has been repainted in BOAC colours and is now working on behalf of BOAC-Cunard Ltd. The actual date of transfer to BOAC was September 28. Since the aircraft was delivered to Cunard Eagle on February 27, 1962, until its transfer to BOAC it flew a total of l,569hr. Of these 350 were spent on training, 158 were spent on New York-Bermuda scheduled passenger services and 1,062 on the London-Miami mid- Atlantic scheduled passenger services. Total flying hours per day during the last month of operation were 8.6, a record of which any airline, particularly a small indepen dent, could well be proud. On the London-Bermuda-Nassau-Miami/ Kingston service all but one of the 54 round trips scheduled were carried out, one round trip being lost due to damage caused by a vehicle being driven into the aircraft. Eighty-three of the 106 departures at both ends of the route were on time and the punctu ality record was 78.3 per cent. Though short-lived, Cunard Eagle's record as a jet operator makes good reading; and this company remains, for the record, the first British independent airline to operate scheduled passenger services with jets—New York-Bermuda, March 27, 1962. IFALPA ACTIVITIES ICAO airworthiness committee meetings are being attended by an ever=increasing number of representatives from the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations (IFALPA). A case in point was the fifth meeting in this series, attendance at which was at times nearly 25 per cent IFALPA. The Association's recent reports on these important policy-making safety discussions provide a useful account of the proceedings ahead of the official ICAO report. The following synopsis of these reports give an indication of the main points discussed, and some of the IFALPA represent atives' comments. Most of the discussion on performance was concerned with take off and landing. A lg stalling speed was the agreed basis for dis cussion on these points, and the "free air minimum control speed" and decision speed were re-defined accordingly. Experience during regular operations has shown that pilots add 15-20kt to the minimum safety take-off speed. After companies had warned pilots of the penalties of excessive speed on climb gradients the average speed in hand dropped to around 7kt. However, IFALPA felt that the evidence did not suggest that pilots were doing this without good reason and, consequently, they strongly resisted the committee's decision to reduce the coefficient of VSmin by 4 per cent. Proposed changes in the regulations to cater for an accelerate- stop on wet runways were resolved into a proposal to include a short time period after the appropriate wet runway decision speed (6sec two engines, 4sec three, 3sec four) during which it was considered acceptable that engine failure would possibly not give the usual 35ft clearance at the end of the runway. Every conceivable phase of landing performance was examined, and greater accountability was taken in the case of a number of important aspects, notably: wet runways, the effects of worn tyres, and variable runway friction. IFALPA also fought strongly against what it called the "entirely illogical" suggestion that there should be any difference in the performance margins at an alternate aerodrome. The committee decided that the runway required at an alternate should be 95 per cent of that required at a destination. As to the meeting as a whole, IFALPA considered that five fields of discussion were the most productive: (1) The advancing of realistic performance regulations for the landing phase; (2) The ICAO committee's agreement on flight manual standardization; (3) An agreement upon recommendations for gathering more infor mation on static system errors; (4) Runway distance markers, with the prospect of further trials; (5) A draft recommendation on flying qualities to be associated with revised performance schedules. During the meetings a relatively new hazard to airline flying was discussed—the possibility of one aircraft encountering in-flight catastrophic gust loadings from the turbulent wake of another aircraft. Studies have indicated that negative and positive loads can be higher than present ultimate loads. The ICAO committee's opinion was that this problem was one for air traffic control and airmanship rather than the structural engineer. It was suggested, therefore, that avoidance of trailing vortices was the most realistic approach to the problem at the present time. Footnote Another recent publication from IFALPA is a 175-page report on their seven-day annual conference held in Stockholm last March. This active pilots' organization is now taking the initiative in arranging a meeting in Paris on December 6-7 to bring together pilots and aircraft industry representatives to discuss supersonic transport. AIRLINE INERTIAL NAVIGATION CLAIMING that inertial guidance equipment is "approaching a state where it may become commercially feasible," the FAA has placed a $260,000 contract with Litton Systems Inc for equipment and a $22,520 contract with PanAm for installation and testing of an inertial system in a DC-8. Litton will provide a modified version of one of their military inertial systems, consisting of a platform, computer and Latitude and Longitude display/control unit, with which PanAm will make 90 flights, 54 of them Atlantic crossings. Modification will take six months and flight tests will extend over a similar period. Main advantage of the inertial system is that it is independent of both ground and radio, but such high-precision equipment has hitherto been considered too expensive for airline use. Early oper ating problems, such as long pre-flight run-up times and require ments for high-precision power supplies and exact temperature control, have largely been solved. A Litton platform is now per forming very accurately in European F-104Gs. Position errors of only two or three miles after one hour of high-speed flight are becoming average and pilots report that the airborne system even allows them to check and correct ground radar fixes. Isle of Wight Accident Inquest At the Coroner's inquest a verdict of misadventure was returned on the crew of three and nine pas sengers who lost their lives in the Channel Airways DC-3 which crashed into high ground on the Isle of Wight on May 6 last. On the evidence of senior Ministry of Aviation accident investigators and Channel Airways' chief pilot, the jury recommended that radio facilities be installed at Portsmouth Airport. The report of the Ministry's investigation has not yet been published.
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