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Aviation History
1970
1970 - 1613.PDF
I I FLIGHT International, 20 August 1970 ' Just Into Profit New Zealand National Airways Corporation I made a profit of $2,471 (£1,160) last financial year (ended . March 31). The previous year saw a loss of $298,113 (about £140,000). Revenue in 1969-70 was $25.4 million (£11.8 million), ' $2.6 million (£1.2 million) up on the previous year. c AiResearch on Concorde A preliminary contract has been i contract, guaranteed for a minimum value of £4.5 million, reverser actuator for Concorde, according to Aviation Daily. < The device will consist of a lightweight air motor driving a gearbox and ballscrew-actuator through a flexible shaft. * World Military Contract World Airways has received a *• contract, guaranteed for a minimum value of £4.5 million, from the US Air Force Military Airlift Command. The *" contract, one of 21 placed by MAC for the nine months of the 1971 financial year ending on June 30 next year, represents ' 7.5 per cent of the total award for the period. Safety Man Mr Bosko R. Stanojlovic has been appointed European representative of the Flight Safety Foundation. r Active in the field of flight safety for 25 years, Mr Stanojlivic was formerly overseas representative of the Guggenheim Aviation Safety Centre at Cornell University. He is to be based ( at 127 Pepys Roari, London SE14. . Yak-40 Services The Yak-40 is now being used in some of the mountainous areas of tfhe Soviet Union—Central Asia, the , Caucasus and the Urals. Before introduction on these routes it was flown experimentally over the Pamirs between Dushanbe, capital of Tadzhikistan, and Khorog, which is 6,500ft, 2,100m, above sea level. The Canadian agents for the aircraft—Inter- . national Jet Air of Calgary—will be promoting it in the United States market. Selling price in Canada is reported to be less than $1 million, £420,000. Pilot's Point of View DESPITE ALL THAT PUBLICITY about Linesman/Mediator, Britain's ATC radar equipment shows every sign of breakdown. The level of capital investment seems to be inadequate for the provision of sufficient standby services. Friday, July 24, was one day that will be remembered as the latest in an endemic series of radar problems in the Glasgow and Prestwick areas. At the time normally put aside for routine maintenance of the terminal control area (TMA) radar, there was a failure of the high-level Ulster/Scottish radar service. This left the whole area to fall back on procedural control, an event which caused some indications of rather dangerous unpreparedness to become evident. Some aircraft were merely left without communication or information for a period on airways, while others were given instructions to proceed to aids that were off the air because of a power failure at Prestwick. With the VOR not available and the NDB still operating there appeared to be confusion as to the procedures and clearances that were being issued. Full procedural control was impeded by what seemed to be a lack of liaison between upper-airspace control and that of the TMA. The reliance placed on the radar system by ATC in Britain is excessive. Aircraft are often routed away from the prescribed airways in attempts to relieve traffic congestion, without thought as to the recovery action necessary in the event of loss of communication. The failure of radar in busy TMAs is an event always marked by a period of delay, extemporisation and trouble for all concerned. The provision of standby , equipment and power generators, and the training of ATC , officers to cope with the increasing risk of breakdowns, should be a matter of priority. It has a greater bearing on the safe 7 flow of air traffic than has the provision of automated sector f- traffic presentation, and it is of more immediate urgency for ), sanction of capital expenditure. 265 Cargo Post Mr Gordon M. MacCallum has been appointed sales manager, UK and Ireland, for Seaboard World Airlines. TAP Expands in Africa Now that Lourenco Marques airport is able to handle 707s, TAP has started daily services there from Lisbon. Higher Damages The statutory limit to the amount of damages recoverable for personal injuries or death of passengers on Australian airline aircraft has been doubled to $30,000 (£14,000) from August 1. The relative legislation—the Civil Aviation (Carriers' Liability) Act, 1970—provides for the first time statutory coverage for charter passengers. Herculean Task Southern Air Transport, the Miami-based supplemental, points out that, contrary to the impression given in our May 21 issue, the Hercules can carry a fully podded JT9D powerplant for the Boeing 747. The airline has carried fully podded engines for Pan American, World Airways, TWA, Lufthansa, Alitalia, Northwest and Air France. Alan Stratford & Associates The consultants appointed to carry out the recently published study of future air-transport and airport needs in the coastal region of southern England were Alan Stratford & Associates, Maidenhead, and Sir Frederick Snow & Partners, London. The name of the former firm was incorrectly rendered in the report in Flight for August 6, page 189. Hearings End The public hearings by the Commission on the Third London Airport (the Roskill Commission) ended in London last week. Mr Justice Roskill said that the aim was to submit a-report to the President of theBoard of Trade by the end of the year; "but given the quantity of evidence before us." he added," "we should be unwise to make a firm promise." The commission was set up in 1968. There is something wrong when several well-equipped large aircraft are left at high altitude, flying in aimless circles on indifferent aids, without specific procedures and in poor communication contact. In the circumstances referred to above the use of DME as a separation technique was in fact a possibility, if the Glasgow VOR/DME had been used. The continued unserviceability of the Skipness and Prestwick DMEs this summer has been another instance of how the telecommunications branch of the BoT is letting us down. Perhaps the reasons for such under-provision of aids under an Icao plan many years old can be explained away, but for this pilot at least the answer must lie in ignorance—ignorance by the Minister of the need for capital investment to provide an improved standard of reliability. The pilot is soon going to be equipped to determine aircraft position with great accuracy. Inertial-navigation systems are now showing their capability on the air routes, and the days of the point-source aid are numbered. A plan exists in the USA to make direct routeings possible and to relegate to history the idea of concentrating aircraft in one congested air lane. The true place of radar is to monitor, advise and help. With secondary radars plus altitude encoding, and routeings deter mined by programmed airborne computers, we should be able to revise the concept that hinges on the RT vectoring of traffic, except in the case of arrival within TMAs. Even in these areas, the standard arrival procedure can unload the RT chatter and obviate the need for vectoring unless traffic conflicts. How many pilots reading this have had to resort to do-it- yourself ATC on occasions? This is a regular occurrence at some overseas and under-developed locations; it takes the . . . but when it's bad, it s horrid
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