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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1458.PDF
Final assembly of the first Super VCIO is going ahead on schedule at Weybridge. early in 1964 :. This aircraft, the first of 30 for BOAC, is due to fly AIR COMMERCE... MR PEACH SPEAKS HIS MIND MR ROBERT E. PEACH, president of Mohawk, has commented on his airline's One-Eleven order in a recent interview with Aviation Daily. Commenting on the Douglas statement "regretting" AA's decision to "buy an airplane built abroad and which we consider to be an inferior product to ours," Mr Peach says that he wrote to Mr Donald Douglas expressing "absolute astonishment" at this statement. "As a long-time user of Douglas products," wrote Mr Peach, "and an early purchaser of the BAC One-Eleven, and also as one who has personally through many years unsuccessfully urged the Douglas Co to build a short-haul transport, I hope no responsible official of your company said it ... if they did, I think it unnecess ary to point out that American airframe manufacturers would be in sad shape indeed if many foreign carriers had not bought US ... As to the quality of the product, I believe the record will speak for itself." Mr Peach told Aviation Daily that US manufacturers "have totally lost the ambition, if not the know-how, to build short-haul transport. I wish I could be paid for the man-hours that our company alone has spent in trying to interest each of the big four US manufacturers in building a short-haul transport during the past 15 years, yet to the best of my knowledge no sales represent ative of Douglas has ever so much as called upon our company." FOCUS ON QNH REPORTING DURING an approach to an airport at sea level in marginal con ditions, on passing the inner marker the captain of an airliner noticed through a break in the fog that the ground was very close. Although the altimeter was showing 400 feet on a QNH, the captain began an immediate pull-up, and asked for a check on the QNH setting. It was then established that a QNH value 10 mb too high had been given to the aircraft by the airport traffic control. The height of the aircraft above ground when the pull-up was initiated was probably around 110 feet. During the following investigation it was revealed that all read ings during the morning had a 10 mb error. It was suggested that the first reading of the day was wrong, and subsequent checks were only of the final unit and the decimal figure. The airline concerned has reminded its pilots that pressure settings received should be checked against any given previously, and against the forecast at departure. BRITISH EXPERTS WITH ICAO OF all the nations which provide experts for ICAO's civil aviation technical assistance programmes, none supplies more than the United Kingdom. Of the 40 countries seconding experts, Britain is listed top in a recent ICAO publication with 45. Next comes Canada, with 40, followed by France, 31, and the United States, 23. The total number working in 1962 on ICAO expanded programme, special fund projects and in the Congo was 293. One of ICAO's most necessary and worthwhile activities is the technical assistance provided to the less developed countries, as part of the Organization's constant efforts to establish a common set of standards and practices for international civil aviation. Britain makes a major contribution to these efforts both with money and men, and credit for this goes to the Ministry of Aviation and also the less well known Department of Technical Co-operation, a Government department which provides technical assistance in other fields besides aviation. Some of the 45 experts seconded to ICAO would have been recruited by the DTC and some by the Ministry of Aviation. ICAO is experiencing difficulties in recruiting experts, as noted in the Organization's 1962 annual report. Recruitment difficulties were such indeed that, says ICAO, they "prompted an appeal by the Assembly to contractual States to co-operate with ICAO in seconding experts for such periods as they were needed and in trying to ensure that they were fully qualified technically and suitable personally for" technical assistance work." No country has responded to this plea more generously than the United Kingdom. IFALPA ON VERTICAL SEPARATION ARE 2,000ft separations between 30,000ft and 40,000ft necessary? Can more economic use be made of this airspace, which is the cruising realm of an increasing number of jets ? I ATA has been conducting a survey during the present summer season over the North Atlantic in an effort to check altimeter accuracies and this is warmly welcomed by the International Federation of Air Line Pilots Associations. "The airline industry needs to get down to the facts of height-keeping errors," says IFALPA, "and these can be discovered only by a survey of the type being organized by IATA." IFALPA has itself made a preliminary study which does, it says, seem to indicate that, given optimum equipment, the present 1,000ft interval between 20,000ft and 29,000ft ought to be increased by a small amount. However, the 2,000ft interval between 30,000ft and 40,000ft might, it is felt, be decreased by "a somewhat larger amount." A gradually increasing interval from 20,000ft to 40,000ft, using a flight level indicator, seems to IFALPA to be the logical answer and might well produce a net gain of one or two levels. In other words, it might make possible more economical use of increasingly congested air without increasing the risk of collision. This modest goal, says IFALPA, seems worth going for on the really busy routes "though it would of course cost quite an effort in ATC reorganization and aircraft re-equipment and maintenance." DEATH OF THE NJC? SEVEN independent members have withdrawn from the National Joint Council for Civil Aviation, which is the British air transport industry's employer-union organization for the smooth negotiation and settlement of pay scales and so forth. According to Mr F. A. Laker, managing director of British United Airways, the indepen dents were, as he puts it, "sacked" from the NJC by BOAC and BEA. The NJC has broken up, it appears, because the independents refuse to accept the principle that they should automatically fail
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