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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 2554.PDF
194 AIR TRANSPORT... TOO MUCH PACIFIC CAPACITY? AUSTRALIAN fears about capacity increases on Pacific routes were the undercurrent to a recent statement by Mr R. W. Swartz, Minister for Civil Aviation. Mr Swartz said that there would be early consultations between his Govern ment and that of the USA following the settlement of the Pacific route case (see Flight for July 17, page 79), a settlement under which American Airlines will be designated side-by-side with Pan American on routes across the South Pacific to Australasia. The existing bilateral agreement with the USA, said Mr Swartz, already allowed for the designation of a second US carrier. But he pointed out that six major airlines already operated 26 flights a week to and from the USA, and that all carriers in the area were experiencing low passenger load factors. The Boeing 747 would bring a big capacity increase, he added, and the Australian Government were watching the situation closely. A recent survey, he said, indicated that traffic growth in the South Pacific was significantly lower than that given in the estimates used by the US authorities in determining the outcome of the Pacific route case. UNIONS' "NO" TO EDWARDS SOME 3,000 engineering and other ground staff members of BEA and BOAC voted unanimously at a meeting at Heath row last week to oppose the Edwards Committee's proposal for a "second-force" airline. Mr Clive Jenkins, joint general secretary of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Mana gerial Staffs, told the meeting that the Edwards Committee's proposals amounted to a "recipe for the making of mil lionaires." He proposed a motion, which was approved by the meeting, expressing strong disapproval of suggestions for "hiving off" any of the corporations' services to a privately owned second-force airline. Such action, he said, would result in a substantial loss to the community. Any attempt to dis member BEA or BOAC, warned Mr Jenkins, would be met by political activity and, if necessary, by national action. Mr Mark Young, secretary of the trade-union side of the National Joint Council for Civil Air Transport, said that the unions' strongest objections to the Edwards Committee's report concerned the proposals for the sharing of scheduled routes with private independent operators and for the subsidisation of private-airline mergers with public money, and the view that private shareholding in the corporations should be per mitted if there were sound practical reasons for it. TOWARDS QUIETER ENGINES A CONTRACT to build two experimental "quiet" jet engines and to complete an extensive test programme has been awarded by NASA to the General Electric Co. The contract, worth nearly $19 million (£8 million), is part of a research programme for which the goal is a 22,0001b-thrust engine which will operate at noise levels 15-20 PNdB below those at present used in DC-8s and 707s. Components of engines developed by GE for the DC-10 (CF6) and C-5A (TF39) may be used so that the overall cost of the experimental programme can be kept down. The object is to- reduce the two main sources of engine noise—the interaction of the jet efflux with the air, and the fan. According to Aviation Daily, two main approaches to reducing the noise made by the fan will be tried. The first will be to reduce its rotational speed and increase blade loading; the second will be to increase the tip speed of the blades and use blades which are less heavily loaded. Both fans will provide the same amount of compression to the air entering the engine. The project is being co-ordinated with the FAA, and signifi cant results will be reported as the work progresses. Officials hope that by virtue of the high bypass ratio' of the engine (about 5 to 1), the velocity of the jet exhaust can be reduced. They also say that fan noise can be reduced through design to achieve low speed, by the use of only one fan stage, and FLIGHT International, 7 August 1969 by the elimination of inlet guide vanes to reduce the number of noise-generating elements. Other design features include increasing the spacing between the rotor and stator blades and selecting the proper number of fan blades. NASA officials estimate that the design could result in a noise reduction of 17 PNdB on take-off and 14 PNdB on approach compared with engines with the same thrust in use now. A further reduction of 10 PNdB has been predicted for the engine if it is installed in an acoustically treated nacelle, thus providing, respectively, a noise reduction of 27 and 24 PNdB on take-off and approach. At the conclusion of the construction stage, about 2i years from now, GE will ship at least one of the engines to the Lewis Research Centre for noise and performance testing. A large-scale fan-noise research facility has been assembled at Lewis. This uses the power drive from a 10 X 10ft supersonic wind tunnel which is capable of testing 72in-diameter fans at tip speeds up to 1,200 ft/sec. Discussions about a NASA contract were also continuing last month with Pratt & Whitney, who were selected last January, along with GE, for negotiations leading to such a contract. AIR MELITA'S DIFFICULTIES WHILE the financial difficulties of the recently formed Air Melita apparently continue unsolved, there has been argument in the Malta Parliament over the fact that the airline was granted a licence for scheduled services to 13 countries in Europe, even though it was not in a position to operate the services. The Malta licensing authority was criticised for not having obtained a sufficient guarantee of financial stability. Meanwhile, the airline, which has had to lay off its employees, is endeavouring through its Maltese shareholders to arrange alternative finance in time to start operating in October. If it does not succeed, there is the possibility that the licences will automatically lapse. Forty per cent of the original finance for Air Melita was to have been provided from sources in the USA through a company, Aero-Technique, of which Mr J. B. Mathis, Air Melita's managing director, was a founder. In late June, employees of the company found that they were unable to cash pay cheques, and on July 2 they were informed that their salaries had been suspended. There has been legal action against the airline by creditors. URGENT AIRPORT DECISIONS THE needs to decide quickly on a sensible site for the third London airport and to get a go-ahead for the proposed exten sion of the Piccadilly Line to the Heathrow central area are stressed by Sir Anthony Milward in the August edition of BEA Magazine. He also says that if BEA is to continue to buy British aircraft a decision on the airline's future fleet must be made by the end of the year. New, wide-bodied aircraft will be needed by the autumn of 1974 and "it takes at least five years to produce a new aircraft from scratch." Sir Anthony criticises the "endless inquiries into endless sites" for the new airport which are going on while the French are already working on their next Paris airport. The nation's commercial requirements, he says, demand that airports should be near the people who are going to use them "and if we do not provide these airports other nations are going to do so and the great entrepot industry which is within this country's grasp will move elsewhere." If the French "provide good air port interchange facilities near Paris, and we do not, then that is where passengers and goods are, in the long run, going to interchange. "I have every sympathy with those who complain of aircraft noise and, indeed, we all suffer from it to a greater or lesser degree; but I do not believe that in the twentieth century we can banish aircraft, especially in a country such as ours con stantly and entirely dependent on overseas trade, just because you don't like their noise." Closely related to the siting of airports, Sir Anthony con tinues, is the need to have good connections with them. For years the rail link with Heathrow has been debated and nothing has been done. It is obvious that the inquiries on the third
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