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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0155.PDF
international Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 DAY JANUARY 31 1963 Number 2812 Volume 83 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH OFC Editor H. F. KING MBE Technical Editor W. T. GU NSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE In this issue World News 144 Air Commerce 147 Six Britannia Years 156 Straight and Level 159 On the Pre-Flight Line 160 Aircraft Electrical Machines 162 Sport and Business 167 Service Aviation 168 Missiles and Spaceflight 169 Letters 174 Industry international 176 lliffe Transport Publications Ltd, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London, SE1; telephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137). Telegrams Flightpres London Telex. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas £5. Canada and USA $15.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorized at New York, NY. Branch Offices: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, King Edward House, New Street, Birmingham 2; telephone Mid land 7191. Manchester, 260 Deansgate, Manchester 3; telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 62 Bucha nan Street, Glasgow CI; telephone Central 1265-6. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner & Co (Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Hiffe Transport Publications Ltd, 1963. Permission to reproduce illustra tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. Carts Before Horses THE assistant chief engineer of BEA, Mr K. G. Wilkinson, is not a man given to courting publicity. Nevertheless, he made two out standing contributions to the Royal Aeronautical Society's airline engin eering conference on January 21, and won the conference its one and only notice in the national Press. Following up a point about safety—as more and more papers are doing on this subject—the Daily Mail quoted Mr Wilkinson as saying: "We need better radio aids to navigation. They must be standardized quickly, instead of being held up by international wrangles. And maps must be RIGHT—not marked with misleading safety heights, as has happened." We would hesitate to suggest that Mr Wilkinson's contributions to this valuable meeting were the most important of all, because most of what was said by the distinguished speakers (pages 154-155) might be rated by one or other section of the airline industry as pre-eminent. But. to paraphrase Dr Johnson, it matters not so much what one considers as how carefully one considers it. Let us refer again to Mr Wilkinson. Towards the end of a discussion on the supersonic airliner he rose to say with some feeling: "I am unhappy about the way this conference is going. We are putting the cart before the horse." His list of priorities, he said, would start off with safety—twelve hundred people killed last year were too many. In a decade the number killed at the present rate would be "unacceptable." Next, he said, he would put the question of cost. "The faster the airlines go the less they are likely to learn about how to do things cheaply," and economics might well be served best "if we could do another generation of subsonic airliners and do them properly." We were, he declared, spending £80m on a supersonic aircraft, yet there was not enough push behind things like all-weather landing and so on that contribute to the reduction of cost. It had not once been mentioned that the airlines' job was to serve the public, and he agreed with the notable public figure [Lord Brabazon] who had said of the supersonic airliner: "You will not get one more man in the air by making this machine." Mr'Wilkinson would feel happier about the SST "if we were to do these other things." . . . and Cartography Before all Else? Mr Wilkinson's remarks on safety height could well be followed up by the Ministry of Aviation as a matter of urgency. Week by week since last autumn these pages have testified to the real concern among pilots about the standards of maps and charts, and about the information available for the estimation of safety heights (see also the "Letters" page of this issue). The grim toll of the past five or six years—during which seven British transport aircraft have hit high ground with the loss of 167 lives—is evidence in itself that something is amiss. No one would suggest that all these tragedies have been caused or abetted by misleading maps or charts. But there is strong prima facie evidence to this effect in the case of at least two; and four recent accident reports have indicated that all may not be well with existing route-familiarization regulations. We echo Mr Wilkinson's plea that the aviation industry and the Govern ment, in their £80m supersonic haste, should not fail to get safety priori ties in perspective. It would not cost the Ministry £80m, for example, to tighten up its route-competence requirements, or to issue a Civil Aviation Information Circular warning pilots of the dangers—which are real beyond all reasonable doubt—of being misled by spot heights on maps and charts. And it would not cost £80m to get the maps and charts improved.
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