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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 2030.PDF
FLIGHT International, 9 July 1964 53 lO.OOOhr. Periodic maintenance is due every 45Ohr on the Boeing. This comes up every five or six weeks, takes two or three days, and costs about £A4,000 in labour and materials. A powerplant overhaul costs about £A12,000." The Pratt & Whitney engines are turned round in 20 days. This is not fast; but, as one engineer put it, it matches aircraft utilization. Although Qantas have an average stage length of over 1,300 miles, utilization has not in the past been as high as that generally prevail- i.ig in the international airline business,and has certainly not been of the world-famous order achieved by the much shorter-haul Australian domestic airlines. But the 11 Boeings now average about lOJhr a day apiece, and by the end of the year will be up to llhr. Time-lifing control of component overhaul lives, which contri- butes so much to the economy of complex-airliner maintenance, is at present done clerically, but within two years the IBM 1401 computer now used mainly for inventory control will be saying what has to come out when. "The organization of time-lifing costs money," as Mr Ashover puts it, "but it's worth it." The tidiness and cleanliness of the engineering departments kept impressing itself on us. One good idea we noticed: all the things that have to be dirty—drills, vices, welding, tin-bashing and so on— are grouped together in sectioned-off "dirty rooms" in a corner of each department. Qantas overhaul everything themselves, subcontracting nothing —scarcely even any machining work these days. Most of their test rigs and equipment they make themselves. Altogether something like 48,000 components a year are turned out for other airlines as well as for themselves. Qantas have 330 pilots, 120 flight engineers, 96 navigators and just over 400 stewards and stewardesses. They reckon to spend (money again) about £A18,000 training a Boeing 707 commander up to their standards. First there is a seven-week technical training course in the classroom, then 25hr minimum in the simulator, followed by a 17-20hr airborne conversion (which, for a propeller aircraft pilot, says Capt T. T. Young, ox. training, is rather like "changing your golf swing." Flight training is done at Avalon in Victoria and light aircraft training at Tamworth in Northern NSW (where probably the two DH.125s that Qantas are negotiating for— primarily to replace the one remaining Qantas DC-3—will be based). There follows 50hr minimum in command on the route under supervision, after which each pilot is given a check every 90 days. Normal 707 crew complement is three pilots, a navigator, and an engineer. Co-pilots cost about £A14,000 to train, and navigators just over £A6,000. Average pilot utilization is 625hr a year and each man spends between 150 and 180 days of the year away from home on average. Crews are based in London and San Francisco as well as in Sydney, and Cairo and Teheran are used for slips. Crews are away from home for 10-14 days at a time and back at home they usually have a training exercise on the simulator before going back on the route. Qantas are about to take delivery of a second Link simulator for Boeings at a cost of $Hm. Unlike the existing $lm unit it will be a digital simulator with rock'n'roll and—though this is not yet settled—colour telly. They have not yet decided on which type of visual attachment to buy. Says Capt T. J. Miller, technical training manager: "We'll wait and see what other operators do before we make up our minds." He is awaiting with particular interest the results of BOAC's and BEA's experience with visual attachment systems. Two or three years ago, in the days when airlines made headlines by anti-supersonic airliner statements, Qantas were among the few in favour. One has only to look at the map to see why the super- sonic airliner could mean so much to Australia. Perhaps because they have always been inclined to be conservative about making a .decision on an actual piece of hardware, Qantas were late in the queue for Concords and the American paper SST. On January 16 this year the then Minister for Civil Aviation, Senator Shane Paltridge, gave Qantas permission to negotiate early delivery positions for four Concords and six American SSTs. Early in April Qantas paid deposits on four Concord production-line positions. The airline's official statement read: "The deposits will guarantee delivery of aircraft numbers 30, 36, 40 and 42 if Qantas finally decides to lodge firm orders for the Concord. These represent the 15th, 18th, 20th and 21st positions on the British production line." This deposit, non-refundable, unless the Concord is a flop, was "Flight International" photograph Floor of the engine overhaul shop is of close-boarded cedar, giving the impression of a ballroom. Wood flooring is preferred by the work people, who in any case tend to put down duck boards on concrete, and it is also more forgiving if parts are dropped on it. More than 500 engines a year are overhauled, including the Allison turboprops of RAAF Hercules transports. Spare 707 JT3D-I fan engines stationed down the line have recently been reduced from 11 in number to eight. Last month Qantas overhauled their 200th JT3D-I the outcome of three months' negotiations in course of which Qantas (who negotiated with BAC) stipulated that they wanted earlier delivery positions—1973—than those initially offered, and sought an assurance that the Concord would be suitable not only for the North Atlantic but also for trans-USA, from which they obviously do not want to be precluded by the sonic boom. It is believed that an assurance on this point—which is more worrying to Qantas than North Atlantic range capability—was given by BAC, though not by Sud. The Concord deposits were 1200,000 per aircraft. Notwith- standing the fact that Qantas were rather cross, as recorded in these pages for April 23, that the Concord manufacturers' press release went out of its way to emphasize that the Qantas order was a firm Besides Boeings Qantas operate one DC-3, two DC-4s and four Lockheed Electros
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