FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1964
1964 - 2005.PDF
30 FLIGHT International, 2 July 1964 The 1940-built Supermarine Stranraer referred to by Mr K. Burgess in a letter on this page LETTERS... threats to go slow. I believe that spirit is still there. It is further up the scale that changes are needed. Turning to the pilots: if the captain of a BO AC Britannia gets, say, £300 per month and the captain of an independent company's Britannia only £200 a month, there is something wrong in the state of Denmark. But to turn round in the middle of June and expect 20,000 workers to cancel their holidays on the Costa Brava seems to me to bring nothing but discredit on a great service. If this is how things are done in the modern airline business, I am glad I am getting old. May I end this tirade with an anecdote I heard first-hand. In February 1940 a sergeant pilot on leave from Dishforth was stranded in the early morning hours on Leeds railway station. At last he spotted a taxi driver and asked if he would take him to Pudsey. "It will cost you £2" said the taxi driver. The sergeant pilot laughed to himself. He had been over Germany five hours that night and his daily rate of pay was about 15s. The story is quite irrelevant but it has its moral. One man's life was dominated by self: the other by service. Pinner, Middx JOHN A. MCDONALD SIR,—A recent news item published in the Press and broad- cast by the BBC, stated that "Air Traffic Control officers" in this country were intending to work to rule unless their demands for more pay were satisfied. Only the Ministry of Aviation (Civil Service) officers are threatening such action, and no such attempt to ground British aviation has been suggested by the large number of independent Air Traffic Control officers in the country. This is despite the fact that the majority of independent (non-Government) control officers work twice the hours for far less salary than civil servants. But then the true independent officer has the great ad- vantage of regarding his vocation as a public service and not merely a source of financial gain. Blackbushe Airport, G. D. D. FREEMAN Camberley, Surrey Sound Argument for the Executive Jet SIR,—The tour of the Hawker Siddeley 125 operated by Bristol Siddeley to 16 European countries in an elapsed time of 19hr 32min (page 796, May 14) prompted me to do the same journey by scheduled airline services- -alas, only on paper. The route followed in both cases was: Helsinki - Stock- holm - Oslo - Copenhagen - Amsterdam - Dublin - London - Paris - Brussels - Cologne - Luxembourg - Zurich - Vienna - Rome - Madrid - Lisbon, and according to my calculations the shortest airliner schedule is 78 hours elapsed time, and that only if you are prepared to leave Helsinki on Wednes- days or Sundays. On other days of the week the connections are not so favourable. The airline timetable is as follows:— Local Time Helsinki dep 0800hr (0600 GMT)\via Finnair. SAS, KLM London arr 2250hr /and Acr Lingus London dep 08O0hr \PCA _J c k — - r 2256hr >BEA and Sabena ^| Swissair, Austrian, '-Alitalia, Iberia and J Aero Argentinas Il25hr \.. . l255hr(IIO5 GMT) /loena First day Second day Third day Fourth day Zurich arr Zurich dep Madrid arr Madrid dep Lisbon arr 08l5hr2l20hr direct or quicker scheduled airline service was available. Thus, while in neither case would the journey allow enough time for business to be conducted at each city, the above comparison does, I believe, illustrate the obvious advantage of using an executive jet which can, moreover, arrive and depart at the time required by the passengers without the need to wait for connections. Bromley, Kent c. P. NEALE Long-serving Stranraer SIR,—I am enclosing a photograph of a Vickers Supermarine Stranraer [reproduced herewith—Ed], which the company I work for operated in the summer of 1962. This particular machine had a manufacturer's nameplate showing it to have been made by Canadian Vickers in 1940. It was later owned by a firm in Vancouver, but I believe it has now been presen- ted to a museum. The engines are Wright R-1820s. Yellowknife, NWT, Canada K. BURGESS Soviet Airships—Lighter than Light? SIR,—In your issue of June 4, page 916, you report on a Soviet project using airships for logging operations. Are your quoted figures correct ? Last year a successful logging experiment was carried out in British Columbia, using a stack of two helium-filled balloons. Each was of 84,000 cu ft capacity, with a net lift of 30 cwt. The two together dragged out logs of up to six tons in weight, from nearly half-a-mile away, over difficult logging country and at a high speed of operation. I am, therefore, surprised that an airship of 250,000 cu ft could lift 30 tons! Perhaps in actual fact the volume was planned to be 70,000m3 and not 7,000m3 capacity? A net lift of 30 tons might then be feasible. In any case: why so much interest now? The idea was probably first studied and put to paper in Italy some years ago. The author still believes the idea feasible and economic for some districts. A good deal of actual experimental work using ex-RAF barrage balloons was carried out in Sweden after the war, with interesting (and published) results. It's relatively old stuff! It now appears after all this time that for some forests—in temperate regions, at an altitude not too high above sea level, of difficult access and where clear- felling is general practice—the adoption of some form of lighter-than-air, long-reach logging system is inevitable! Tadley, Hants c. G. LOVEGROVE [A net lift of 30 tons should certainly be possible with an airship of 70,000m3 capacity as our correspondent suggests, but not with the 7,000m3 capacity reported by our Soviet sources.—Ed] Having our Cake—and Eating it SIR,-—May I enquire why you besmirch your excellent journal by permitting publication of such contributions as are occasionally included in "Straight and Level"? To declare as a fact that "most independent airlines are making an absolute mint of money" and then to profess ignorance of their trading results through lack of faces is in my view neither sensible reading nor helpful to the conclusion of mutually satisfactory agreement between the independents and BALPA. Wembley Park, Mddx r. j. WEST The stages from Cologne to Luxembourg and Luxembourg to Zurich were made by road and rail respectively as no FORTHCOMING EVENTS July 1-5 International rally, Baden-Baden. July 3-14 West France Aero Club: 8th international "Angers Week" gliding competition, Angers. July 4 Skyfame Aircraft Museum: Veteran aircraft flying display, Staverton. July 4-5 Royal Aero Club: Invitation air rally, Deauville. July 4-5 Vichy Aero Club: International air rally, Vichy. July 6-9 British Institution of Radio Engineers: Symposium, "Signal Processing in Radar and Sonar Directional Systems." July 8 Kronfeld Club: "The Klemperer Monoplane at Itford Hill in 1922" by John Jeyes.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
