FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1964
1964 - 2157.PDF
176 FLIGHT International, 30 July 1964 AIR COMMERCE... "Standards" now in service had an average utilization of 8hr a day. What gave less cause for satisfaction were the present proposals for spreading delivery dates of the 17 Super VClOs ultimately to be taken by BOAC. Seventeen Super VClOs, said the Minister, is two more than the corporation's plans require "on paper," and maybe two Boeing 707s would be sold off. Seven Super VClOs would be introduced and proven but "precisely when they introduce the balance of ten is a matter for them." The 17 aircraft should be built and delivered as rapidly as possible, said Sir Arthur Harvey. If the taxpayer was footing the bill, BOAC must fit in with these views. The corporation could not have it both ways. Sir William Robson Brown said that with the proposed acceptance rate of the ten aircraft costs inevitably will increase. Sir Lionel Heald asserted we should not, after what has happened, permit BOAC to dictate the time at which these VClOs are delivered. Mr Fred Lee said that delivery dates and costings depended upon a balanced forward programme and under the conditions of the Minister's statement it was physically impossible for Vickers to function. And Mr Jenkins reasoned that whilst being a little less optimistic, economically not technically, about the VC10, he was inclined to the view that the present arrangement was a hopeless compromise which would not help Vickers or the aircraft industry very much, and would leave BOAC with an uneconomically tiny fleet of aircraft. Accepting reluctantly, he said, the position into which we have got, it would be better, once the Super VC10 had proved itself in flight, to require BOAC gradually to sell its Boeings and to move upwards to a larger VC10 fleet. The Minister's solution, to which the Chancellor did not add, was that BOAC and BAC together with his Department should "consult to see how best to deal with any of the aircraft in the interval between production and entry into service." As for the final ten, work on which had already been suspended for a year [at BOAC's request to BAC in April 1963], the Government hoped that they would not need to be cancelled; that technically it might be possible to keep work in suspense for a year or so without interruption to the production line; and that this was a matter for BAC and BOAC to discuss together. Avoiding a Repetition Several Members gave thought to the vital need for avoiding in the future the kind of crisis which had arisen over the VC10. Mr Austin Albu, a member of the Select Committee which had pro- duced the valuable Report to which all paid tribute, said that a great number of public relations speeches were made, in the House as well as outside, by people unwilling to face the real facts of the situation. "What we in this House cannot do is to decide whether the VC10 is or is not a good aircraft. It is simply not within our competence." Many people will agree with Mr Albu and surely all will agree that if Members are to voice opinions on aircraft design or air transport organization then they should have much greater access to objective information. In this connection mention, naturally, was made yet again of the fact that even the Select Committee had been denied full access to the Corbett Report. Mr Lee asked again if it really was the fact, as the Minister had always insisted, that Mr Corbett had undertaken this inquiry only on the understanding that his Report would be secret? He was given no answer. Col Lancaster, another senior member of the Select Committee, said that "if it was properly to do its job on behalf of Parliament, it should not be hampered in its work. To say that we would draw from these [Swash and Corbett! Reports inferences which the Minister had not drawn, is in some way a reflection on our good sense ... it may be said that much of the Report was confidential . . . but in the ordinary course of our work we get many confidential facts and figures and we have to use discretion." Col Lancaster went on to say that the Select Committee was shown some part of the Corbett Report. We gave it a mixed reception, he said. "It may not be altogether fair to criticize the Corbett Report in this respect because we were shown only a part of it, but that part was both flimsy and superficial, and we thought it reached a number of conclusions on very slight premises. If the rest of the Report was no better than the part we saw, the Minister got very little value for money." Earlier in the week Mr Lubbock had asked for a White Paper showing in detail the costs involved in the present proposals, and was told to await the Wednesday debate. Clearly Mr Lubbock was not satisfied by the information given, and said, in a speech almost squeezed out by the clock, that the Minister's speech "was an absolute insult to the intelligence of the House." Mr John Cronin quoted the passage from Flight of June 7, 1957, in which it was estimated that BOAC had too many VClOs on order. Why, asked Mr Cronin, did the then Minister, "who had every kind of expert to advise him," not query that order? Certainly if Parliament, presumably a new Parliament, is to form a firm opinion about the financial consequences of recent events, and the BAC-BOAC-Ministry discussions which are to follow about compensation charges, then many more details of estimates and how they are reached will be needed. The Chancellor's contribution to knowledge on costs was merely that "taking either Sir Giles Guthrie's proposal or the whole of the VClOs would cost something like £20m to £30m more in the next few years." No other hard figures of the costs involved were given. And what about the British aircraft industry in the future, after the VC10 furore has taken its place in history with the V.1000 row? The thought which emerged on several occasions was first voiced by Mr William Shepherd in an intervention. Was it really practic- able in 1964, he asked, to build a national aircraft for a national airline ? Had we not to look to some form of international co- operation in construction? One possible course, said Mr Amery, would be to specialize and to concentrate on the development of aircraft of a particular type, but this would mean contracting out of another important sector. This, perhaps, was the policy of retreat. The alternative was to join forces with our friends in Europe, pooling our resources and enlarging the market. This was what we had done with the Concord. Here we had divided the investment and doubled the home market. With the ELDO launcher, five or six of us had joined together. He was inclined to think that this might well be the pattern of the future. Mr Amery went on to say that on the following day, July 23, he was holding a conference (at Lancaster House, London) with the heads of the aircraft industry and airlines on the lines, it is understood, of the one previously held at Chequers, at which one of the first tasks would be to consider these international possibilities. It was Sir Richard Nugent, chairman of the Select Committee —to whom many personal tributes were paid—who underlined the problem which compels us to turn to an international solution. "The aircraft manufacturing industry," he said, "cannot survive, certainly with long-range aircraft, unless the corporations fly British. But the minimum number on which manufacturers can go into production is substantially more than the commercial interests of the corporations permit them to take." If these factors are to be reconciled, as they must, and in an international framework, then certainly a Minister of the future cannot afford to wait until we again see a collision between what Mr Amery called the corporation interests and the public interest. FRANK BESWICK Aeroflot to Baghdad A weekly Aeroflot II-18 service from Moscow to Baghdad was inaugurated on July 16. The journey flying time between the two capitals is 6hr; a stop is made at Damascus. To Sell PIA in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Pakistan airline has appointed Mr Alan Bennett as its sales manager for the region. Mr Bennett previously joined BOAC in 1945 and has held various posts with the corporation including those of reser- vations manager and sales manager UK. FAA Personnel Changes The transfer of four FAA executives to new posts within the Agency has been announced by the Adminis- trator Mr Najeeb Halaby. Mr W. Lloyd Lane, Deputy Director of FAA Flight Standards Service in Washington, is to manage the Aeronautical Centre in Oklahoma City, Mr Clifford W. Walker, Chief of the Flight Standards Division in the FAA's Southern Region in Atlanta, will become Deputy Director of the Flight Standards Service; Mr Lewis N. Bayne, Manager of the Aero- nautical Centre, will be the new Executive Officer of FAA's South- west Region in Fort Worth, Texas; Mr Donald A. Schuler, Execu- tive Officer of the Southwest Region, will become Executive Officer of the FAA's System Maintenance Service in Washington. All the transfers are planned for September 1.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
