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Aviation History
1970
1970 - 0094.PDF
~70 FLIGHT International, IS January ,970 ) Milan moves ahead The Dassault Milan strike fighter, which was first shown in its experi mental form at last year's Paris Air Show, will fly in its definitive form be fore next June. Orders for this aircraft, confidentially anticipated by the firm in response to the continuing interest in the Mirage 3 and Mirage 5, and a new pro gramme are both badly needed if Dassault is to maintain its position as one of Europe's leading suppliers of military aircraft. The Milan is a development of the Near-miss Dear Heathrow At 1842 BST on January 9 a near- miss incident occurred between an Indian Air Force Constellation and an Olympic Airways Boeing 727 which was five miles from touchdown at Heathrow. Two inquiries have been set up by the BoT. The first is by the NATCS Airmiss Working Group—virtually an internal ATC inquiry which is standard in these cases—but the Chief Inspector of Accidents has also set up a "pre liminary field inquiry" to determine whether the incident was sufficiently significant to warrant a full-scale inquiry. It is understood that the Constellation was on a flight from Paris to Northolt where, because it did not carry the UHF Mirage 5. itself developed from the Mirage 3 and selected! by Israel (although its order has been blocked), Iraq, Bel gium, Peru and Libya. It is characterised by retractable canard surfaces, which substantially improve the low-speed and airfield performance of the Mirage series, lit will be marketed at a unit price of £800,000. This includes the cost of the single-seat nav-attack system developed for the French Jaguar. This is only £40,000 more than the current price of the Mirage 5. ground-controlled approach radar fre quencies for a military airfield, it was experiencing difficulty in completing an approach to runway 26. During the overshoot from the third approach the Constellation appears to have turned left instead of right on to an initial heading of 040'. This heading took the Constellation across the approach path of Heathrow's 23L runway which was in use at the time. The Olympic 727 was on a normal approach on ILS at 1.700ft and some 5 miles from touchdown when the Con stellation was seen to be crossing from right to left. The Olympic aircraft then climbed to 2,000ft before resuming its approach. It had a crew of nine and 13 passengers aboard and had flown direct from Athens. The weather at the time of the inci dent included a strong south-westerly wind; visibility was 6km, with two oktas of cloud at 800ft and eight oktas at 1,600ft. It was also dark and turbulent. The Constellation is said to have re quired four approaches to Northolt before finally landing. Normally aircraft approaching the airfield are under the control of the Heathrow Approach radar operator until they are eight miles from touchdown at Northolt, when they are handed over to the RAF controller there. The controlling authority at the time of the incident and the height to which the Constellation had been cleared are among points which the inquiries will have to clarify before determining the cause of the incident. • Over the weekend, representatives of i both BALPA and the Guild of ATC Officers were reported to have con demned Northolt as a safety hazard in the vicinity of Heathrow. There are clear ATC procedures to ensure that traffic to the two airports does not conflict. Ap proach paths are so close, however, when Giant in London The.Boeing 747 made its first visit to Britain when it arrived at Heathrow last Monday on a Pan American proving flight. Commercial services are due to begin next week (see also page 73)
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