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Aviation History
1967
1967 - 1339.PDF
1022 FLIGHT International, 21 December 1967 The prototype DC-9-4Q, which made its initial flight on November 28, flies over the "Queen Mary" off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. On board the -40 was the vice-mayor of Long Beach, the liner's final resting place FAA's only critic in this matter. A Congressman, Mr Richard Ottinger, said in a letter to Mr Boyd last month that the nation was faced "with a series of tragedies" unless the Government backed the vise of arresting gear. As an example, he pointed to two jet transports, one at Boston and one at New York, which overran the runways during a one-week period. There were no fatalities, but Mr Ottinger claimed that both could have been avoided with the use of arresting gear. JUMBO CO-OP THE first plan on a major scale in the USA for full-scale co-operation in the maintenance of, and training for, Boeing 747s, and, later, BAC/Sud Concordes, was announced recently toy Trans World and Eastern. The first stage in the plan will be the organisation by TWA of work on their own 747s and those of Eastern, who will delegate to TWA the authority to determine the specifications and to act as Eastern's agent for these, and for contract administration, factory representation, pre-delivery inspection and acceptance, spares provisioning and documentation. The primary initial objective will be the standardisation of aircraft and engines for the two carriers. TWA will also train Eastern's flight and ground crews and provide primary maintenance and operational support for Eastern's aircraft, engines and accessories, leaving Eastern responsible only for routine servicing. The two airlines will lease 747s to and from each other to meet specific seasonal traffic requirements on a long- and short-term basis. In return, Eastern will provide similar arrangements for the handling of their own and TWA's Concordes. TWA has 12 747s (including three of the all-cargo variant) and six Concordes on order/ option, while Eastern has four 747s and six Concordes on order/option. MEA AND THE VC10 THE prospect of orders from Middle East Airlines for the Super VC10 has been greatly enhanced by the leasing from Laker Airways by the carrier of the prototype VC10 (see Sensor in last week's issue and that for November 2, page 710). A total of five Supers (or 707s) will be required by MEA, who have naturally required a guarantee of delivery and of spares availability for a 15-year life. Commenting on Seen at Southend last week—one of Channel Airways' HS.748s (G-ATEJ) in the incomplete livery of its new operator, Midwest Aviation of Winnipeg, Canada, with whom it is now registered as CF-MAL. Midwest recently applied for approval for a scheduled third- level service between Winnipeg and Regina, via Brandon and Yorkton. The 748 was handed over on December 14 the lease, which will be from January next year until March 1969, Sheikh Najib Alamuddin, chairman and president of MEA, said: "We have been operating VC10 services now for some time [with an aircraft leased from Ghana Airways]. We have, therefore, been able to find out exactly what the true operating costs of this aircraft are. We have been delighted to discover that they are lower than ever we or BAC have estimated. Our operating experience has proved to us that the VC10 is highly compeititive and in fact its operating costs come out within two per cent of other major jets now operating. This very small percentage has been much more than recovered by the enthusiastic passenger support which we find the VCIO always commands." After the end of the lease G-ARTA will be used by Laker Airways for Jong-haul inclusive-tour work. CINCINNATI ACCIDENT CAUSE? IN an interim report, the first of its kind, on the TWA Convair 880 accident near Greater Cincinnati Airport on November 20 (see Flight for November 30, page 899) the US National Transportation Safety Board says that it is now con- centrating on possible altimetry system failure. The recovered flight recorder showed that, after passing the outer marker, the 880's rate of descent increased to l,800ft/min, which was maintained until 20sec before impact, then to 3,000ft/min for about 5sec and to 1,800ft/min until some 5sec before impact. In the cockpit-voice record, however, "there were no calls of altitude, airspeed, or sink rates in excess of l,000ft/min." Investigation has been concentrated, therefore, on "the cockpit instrumentation, the systems associated with display of altitude, rate of descent, airspeed and pilot operational factors," and on the reliability of the information presented to the crew by examination of the recovered instruments and a study of the pressure-sensing system for these instruments. There is no evidence of engine, airframe, or control system malfunction or failure. NZ 737s Cost More Because of devaluation, NZ National Airways' three Boeing 737-200* will cost SNZ2 million more (SNZ13.6 million). The first two of three on order are scheduled to be in service by December 1968. Swissair Confirms 747 Order A firm order has now been placed by Swissair for two Boeing 747s for delivery in the first half of 1971. The intention of buying the 747 was initially announced at the airline's annual general meeting last April. Swissair will operate the 747 on the New York services with 32 first-class and 321 economy-class passengers and with a crew of 19. There will foe a payload margin for 22,0001b of cargo. Missing Link The dropping of a line in the first sentence of the penultimate paragraph of the article "Jet Airliner Safety in last week's issue (page 1000) has made nonsense of its meaning. This should have read (the missing words are in square brackets): "If there is no improvement in the jet fatal accident rate, some 20 fatal accidents can be expected, involving about a thousand passenger fatalities, based on the average number of passenger fatalities] per fatal accident during the last ten million jet hours."
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