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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1984.PDF
FLIGHT International, 14 November 1963 787 PROGRESSIVE IMAGE—No 1 ALITALIA'S publicity department announced on November 3 that the airline has booked an order with the FAA for three American supersonic airliners. A deposit of $300,000 has been paid. The Italian airline is thus the first non-US airline to order the American supersonic pig-in-a-poke, following the orders booked by Pan American, TWA, American and Flying Tiger. Delivery of the three aircraft, it is said, is expected in 1970-71. The deal was signed by Sr Bruno Velani, Alitalia's general manager, who told a press conference that the specifications of the American aircraft "meet Italian needs." This suggests that Alitalia's needs are fairly flexible, because no specifications for the American supersonic airliner yet exist. The Italian airline is reported to have said that it decided against the Concorde because the aircraft would not have sufficient range to fly Milan - New York, a distance of 3,460 n.m. PROGRESSIVE IMAGE—2 MR KNUT HAGRUP, technical and operations executive vice- president of SAS, said on November 2 that his airline wanted to delay the introduction of supersonic airliners five years beyond the present target date of 1970. In a press statement Mr Hagrup said that the airline industry should go slow in developing the supersonic airliner for reasons of air safety and economics. He doubted whether the problems could be solved in time to meet the deadlines which he understood to be 1970 for the Anglo-French Concorde and 1970-71 for the American project. SAS could not consider introducing supersonic airliners "until operating costs were proportionally as low as, or lower than," those of its present Douglas jet transports. THE COMPETITORS " WE really do not know what Mr Bamberg is talking about. BEA have been expanding their routes and services for 17 years to cater for the growing demand for air transport and we do not really need to borrow any ideas from Mr Bamberg as to when and how to operate air services for the benefit of the travelling public."—A BEA spokes man. SUCH huffiness—or perhaps, to be more in BEA's character, just tongue-in-cheek. The fact is that BEA have followed every competitive move made by Mr Bamberg of British Eagle. For example, full meal service is now offered on London - Belfast, where there was no meal service before; tourist-class as well as first-class BEA passengers now have meal service on London - Glasgow and London - Edinburgh; BEA are offering seat selection facilities to passengers at Belfast, Glasgow and Edinburgh; and are allowing passengers to "trickle-load," i.e., to take their seats in the aircraft at these airports after checking in rather than waiting about in the terminal. BEA have also increased capacity on the Belfast, Glasgow and Edinburgh routes by some 50 per cent since last winter. Mr Bamberg said in Glasgow last week: "BEA have changed their timetables three times in order to duplicate our flights exactly on each route. In addition they have decided to put a 50 per cent increase on London - Edinburgh, London - Glasgow and London - Belfast, whereas on the London - Manchester route—which if ever there was one is a route which needs more capacity—they have not put on any increase at all." Ironically, British Eagle's passengers travel between terminal and aircraft at London Heathrow in BEA coaches. British Eagle have been trying to obtain permission from the Ministry to operate their own coaches but [have failed. To quote a Ministry spokesman: "Permission was not given in view of the agreement between the Ministry of Aviation and airlines when the apron services at London Heathrow were taken over from the Ministry by the airlines with BEA acting as their agent." A British Eagle spokesman said: "If the Ministry's argument is that our coaches will contribute to ngestion on the aprons it is just not logical. Two movements by our own coaches would surely mean two less by BEA's." J aotnote On the evening before British Eagle's inaugural service to Glasgow (see report in last week's issue) BEA put on an extra service to Belfast for 36 passengers, some of whom alleged—appar ently rather heatedly—that the airline had overbooked their seats en Belfast flights. An extra Viscount service was duly operated, and a BEA spokesman said: "When the last of the three flights had left there were about 36 passengers left. Of this number there were two firm bookings which we had not honoured, 22 passengers had full fare open dated tickets, and 14 or so were stand-by passengers. There was an unexpectedly high number of passengers with open tickets who arrived at the airport in anticipation of travelling last night but all the seats on our scheduled services had been pre- booked." THE SLEDGEHAMMER-AND-NUT-CASE EARLIER this year the Air Transport Licensing Board granted Caledonian Airways a C licence for two Christmas-time DC-7C charter flights to Palma. A modest enough award, it seemed; but to everyone's astonishment BEA invoked the mighty engine of the appeal machinery. "There is no need for such a service," BEA's advocate insisted before the Minister's appeal commissioner, Sir Charles Key. "It will divert traffic from our scheduled services to Palma." If BEA appealed against every one of the 1,000 independent charter licences granted or varied by the ATLB each year, the Minister would run out of appeal commissioners possibly even before BEA ran out of advocates. But, as the commissioner says in his report—published on November 5—BEA consider a principle to be at stake—namely, he presumes, "that so long as they have the capacity, no licences should be granted to other operators, at any rate on their scheduled routes." The commissioner does not think that the principle is applicable in this case and, though appreciating BEA's obligation to "shew the flag," he recommends the Minister to dismiss the appeal. The Minister, after more than a month of no doubt anxious contem plation, accepts the recommendation. As for Caledonian, the commissioner notes that their advocate "said little" at the appeal hearing. So Caledonian and all the independents can breathe again. FATIGUE CAUSED VERTOL CRASH FATIGUE failure of the quill shaft installed in the aft transmission assembly connecting the Vertol 107's two engines to the rotors caused the fatal New York Airways accident at Idlewild on October 14. This is stated by the CAB after a preliminary investigation of the accident, in which three passengers and three crew were killed. It was NYA's first fatal accident. The failure of the quill shaft caused rotor blade collision with resultant loss of control. The CAB is now conducting a "detailed study of the design, manufacture, maintenance and overhaul of the 107's transmission system with the object of ascertaining the cause of the fatigue." A public hearing will take place early in December. IATA FACTS AND FIGURES FINAL traffic figures for 1962 just published by the International Air Transport Association* provide, as usual, a complete break down of traffic results, international and domestic, for all 93 members together with number of employees and operating fleets. No financial results are given for each member, facts and figures which will have to await publication of ICAO's Financial Digest of Statistics for 1962 during the course of next year. Of particular interest in the figures presented for North Atlantic traffic is the surprisingly modest increase in IATA charter passengers carried. Of the total 2.6m passengers carried by IATA operators across the North Atlantic on scheduled and charter services in 1962, 315,000—or 12 per cent—went on charter flights. The percentage in the previous year was just under 12 per cent. This increase does not seem sufficient to justify Sir William Hildred's "greatly dis turbed" reaction to increased charter flying across the Atlantic; what he was obviously disturbed about was non-IATA charter traffic. Not apparent from these IATA figures is the amount of group travellers carried on scheduled services. A measure of the decline of first-class operations on the North Atlantic is given by the figure of 208,000 passengers compared with 245,000 in 1961 and by the dive of first-class load factor from 57 per cent to 47.6 per cent. * World Air Transport Statistics 1962, published by IATA, 1060 University Street, Montreal 3, PQ, Canada, price 50 cents US or equivalent.
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