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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 1526.PDF
FLIGHT International. 27 February 1949 325 AIR TRANSPORT. LIGHT Swissair goes to Oxford COMMERCIAL & BUSINESS THE Oxford Air Training School has scored a major first with the successful conclusion of contract negotiations with Swissair to give the airline's ab initio cadet pilots their pre-DC-9 advanced flight training on Twin Comanches. Swissair is contracting for up to I0,000hr of flight training; although the value of this is not stated, it is almost certainly worth at least £300,000. The first intake of 24 cadets will arrive at Oxford on May I. The course will last 13 weeks and com prise, per student, approximately 70hr of flying on the Twin Comanche and lOhr of link training; the second and sub sequent intakes will be of approximately 18 cadets and will follow immediately, one upon another. The securing of this contract is a major achievement for British commercial pilot training and is appropriate justifica tion for the school's claim "the finest in Europe." Also, the work has come at a most opportune moment with the current decline in the British airline requirement for commercial pilot graduates. That it is a course for advanced flying with emphasis on one airline's operating procedures is also significant. Swissair, like many national and regional airlines, is rapidly becoming all-jet and there are not the facilities within the airline (as there used to be when companies of this kind flew DC-3s, DC-4s, Convairs or Viscounts) for introducing cadet pilots to route flying on less demanding types. Swissair's simplest aircraft is now the two- pilot twin-jet DC-9, and a cadet must possess a high degree of competence and experience from the moment he goes on the flight deck. Credit for securing the Swissair contract goes to Mr Rex Smith, principal of the Oxford Air Training School, to Mr John Pooley, the deputy principal, and to many of the staff at Kidlington. In Mr Smith's own words in an interview he gave to Flight: "my whole staff has been extremely enthusiastic to get this contract." It was last summer that OATS first got to hear that Swissair was considering an advanced instru ment flying training course. Mr Smith made immediate contact with the airline's flight operations director; the rival American schools had learned of the requirement through Douglas who, in supplying DC-9s and DC-8 Super 60s, had become familiar with the airline's training needs. When the Oxford managers first met Swissair the airline indicated the wish for the training to be undertaken on light twins equipped with the identical flight director system as fitted to the DC-9, and with as much as possible of the cockpit layout modified to represent the twin-jet so that the full tech nique and check list procedures could tie followed. Within a week the school had prepared a detailed presentation in accordance with the airline's requirements. For some while after this Swissaar visited training schools in America, before ending up at Oxford. As a result of this investigation the airline modified its requirement and a dual-pointer RM1 was sub stituted for the flight direotor system. It was believed that with the likelihood of further changes in the presentation of flight director systems, that pilots might perhaps be better trained by being given a thorough grounding through familiarity with classic instrumentation. The latter was also much cheaper. It was during the autumn that Swissair decided in principle to accept the Oxford offer. Since then the full details of the course have been worked out, and all is now ready to roll in May. The instrumentation and layout of seven of Oxford's 12 Twin Comanches are being modified to the Swissair require ment for a "basic T with RM1" together with considerable re-arrangement of the other instruments and controls so as near as possible to simulate the DC-9 cockpit and to make most of the twin-jet's check list applicable. A Swissair training captain will be resident with the special flight at Oxford which will be managed by Mr Michael Goodwin, one of the school's instructors and a former RAF instructor on Gnats. Mr Goodwin has spent some time with Swissair and has discussed all details of the syllabus, sat in on crew conversion and training lectures, studied the airline's handling techniques and flown on DC-9 training missions both ftom Zurich and Bratis lava. All of this has given Oxford a thorough knowledge of what will be expected of their graduates once they return for airline service. Swissair training personnel have and will be spending time at Oxford to ensure that the ab initio training in Switzerland misses nothing that will be required in England. The majority of the cadets will be graduates of the Swissair basic flying school which provides I50br of flying on the single-engined S1AT Flamingo acrobatic trainer, followed by six months of ground school—.the flying and ground school are not integrated. A few of the cadets will be ex-military and of slightly wider experience. The entire operation at Oxford will be in accordance with procedures based on Swissair operations and route manuals. A feature of the syllabus that is different from British Board of Trade-inspired regulations is that once the pilot has proved capable of flying the basic exeroises there are no set patterns or daily routeings. The training will, in fact, cover the majority of UK terminals and will involve the pilot with all normal day-to-day operating procedures. Swissair do not require their cadets to obtain British licences or ratings, and the final test of each pupil will be flown with the Swiss licensing officer in the aircraft. The formula for success Flight asked Mr Rex Smith what he thought had enabled Oxford to win the order. His answer was brief: "Reputation, quality and the fact that we are working in the European environment." The latter, he said, was very important because several European airlines with experience of crews trained in the US were finding that after the clear blue skies of Cali fornia these pilots took a while to acclimatise themselves to the filthy weather in this part of the world. Did he think that Oxford had made a more competitive quotation on price? The answer was no, and a reiteration that the choice had been made on practical considerations. "We were, of course, competitive on price, but it was not crucial. . . . We were like shopkeepers. We asked the airline what it wanted and then went out of our way to give them exactly that." Mr Smith is also visiting several other European airlines and in the near future is likely to be going even further afield. The opportunities which this energetic organisation has grasped most effectively, when in full competition with the best in the world, is a major triumph for British civil flying. So far, it seems, there has been little collaboration between British manufacturers and the nation's flying training and other ancillary fields in civil aviation that might be offered to provide customers with the complete service as practised to such good effect by the Americans. With Oxford's Swissair deal as encouragement, and in view of the success that Britain has had with package deals in the military sphere, may it be hoped that the same idea will spread to commercial aviation?
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