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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 0095.PDF
[FPHKAT INTERNATIONAL. incorporating AEROPLANE ounded in 1909. Official organ ol the Royal Vero Club. First aeronautical weekly in he world. © Published by lliffe Transport •ublications Ltd, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1. Telephone 01-928 3333 dumber 3123 Volume 95 rhursday 16 January 1969 Editor ]. M. Ramsden Mr transport editor hi. A. Taylor Production editor Roy Casey Assistant editors Neil Harrison, CEng, AFRAeS Humphrey Wynn, BA Assistant technical editor Michael Wilson, BSc, CEng, FBIS, AFRAeS Subsonic and Supersonic Editorial director Maurice A. Smith DFC Managing director H. N. Priaulx MBE IN THIS ISSUE World News 78 Air Transport 80 Private Flying 88 3akistan's Air Power 89 Jet safety 95 1968 overall safety picture 99 3oeing's latest SST proposal Pt 1 104 ndustry International 109 Spaceflight 110 Defence 114 Straight and Level 116 Front cover: A Chinese-built MiG-19 of :he Pakistan Air Force photographed from a two-seat MiG-15UTI. An article on the PAF and its equipment begins on page 89. Two transport aircraft which will change the world are due to begin their flight trials very soon. By the time these words are read the Boeing 747 prototype may actually be airborne; and the first prototype BAC/Sud Concorde should be making its maiden flight at Toulouse before a month is out. The 747 should be in service in 1970, and the Concorde in 1972 or 1973. Russia's supersonic transport, the Tu-144, may be in service before the Concorde, though perhaps not by the end of this year as some Soviet pre dictions suggest. Ilyushin's far less complex 11-62 took four years from maiden flight to first passenger service. The jumbo-size subsonic jets will produce lower fares (the: US Civil Aeronautics Board will see to that) and will make possible the mass production and supermarketing of airline seats, The supersonic airliners will not pro duce lower fares, at least not for many years to come. For the first time techno logy will provide the public with a clear choice; subsonic travel at less than today's fares, or supersonic travel at more than today's fares. There will be a two-speed fare structure on the medium and longer routes. Many thought that this sort of fare structure was going to develop when the subsonic jet era began in earnest ten years ago—high fares for jets, low fares for propellers. Massive invest ments in new turboprop airliners like the Britannia, Vanguard and Electra were based on this assumption. But the jet has completely supplanted the propeller airliner on all long-range and medium-range routes, and it is now taking over the shorter—though not yet the shortest—sectors. This has happened because public demand has always been for the shortest journey time, and because technology has developed the jet engine to the point where it produces air transport ton-miles more cheaply than could ever have been predicted. Looking at those enormous fans at the front of the new engines which are coming along we wonder who won the turbojet versus turboprop controversy which was engaged with such erudition in these pages a decade ago. Will history repeat itself and will the subsonic jumbo jet be supplanted by the supersonic airliner? Most likely there will always be the two distinct forms of transport on medium and long routes with a fare differential between them of 25 to 50 per cent—slow and cheap, or fast and dear. The supersonic airliner will always be the economic aggressors, since speed is air transport's prime commodity. But the subsonic transport will for very many years have the edge on operating cost. Most probably we shall see the 747 and the Concorde, and their 1,000-seat and 500-seat successors of the nineties, offering their different kinds of service at different prices. There will be no market for super sonic airliners on the very short routes. Perhaps 1,000 miles is the economic minimum distance for supersonics, with accelerations and declerations unac ceptable to passengers and fuel con sumptions unacceptable to operators. Short-hauls will be the regime of the subsonic jet in all its sizes and forms —including the airbus, that elusive mini jet, and the VTOL transport, to name but a few.
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