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Aviation History
1971
1971 - 2249.PDF
FLIGHT International, 28 October 1971 INDIAN CHARTER DETAILS AIR-INDIA'S commercial director, S. K. Kooka, will be the first chairman of the charter company to be set up as a subsidiary of Air-India. The Indian Government has already given approval; legal and other formalities are being completed. The charter company is being set up with only a small capital of about R500,000, £28,000, because it will only charter 707s from Air-India. Air Marshal M. S. Chaturvedi, Air-India general manager, in a recent press briefing on the proposed charter company, said that lata had to reorientate its passenger policy to take account of the present situation with respect to charters. Pan Am global 747 Pan American will inaugurate daily round-the-world flights on October 31. Every day a Pan Am 747 will fly eastbound from New York and another will fly westbound from Los Angeles—stopping at London, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Beirut, Teheran, New Delhi, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Honolulu. Teheran will be served three days a week by the 747 service and Karachi four days weekly. All other cities on the round-the-world route will be served daily. A DETAILED HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, and some prophecy, on economic and engineering aspects of air transport were given by BAA chairman Peter Masefield at Heathrow on October 12 when he read Slaet's first Sholto Douglas memorial lecture. His title was "Some engineering aspects of aviation in the world about us." Mr Masefield began with a colourful—could it be other wise?—review of Lord Douglas's unique career. A First World War fighter pilot; a pioneer commercial captain (CPL No 4), who instituted domestic services in 1919 on the emancipation day from wartime restrictions and who in September 1919 began services between London and Paris; back into the RAF for a career which led to many major commands, the rank of Marshal of the RAF and the military governorship of British-occupied Germany; and, ultimately, chairmanship of BEA for 16 years—the longest period served by the chairman of any nationalised enterprise. Those days of Sholto Douglas's early services from Cricklewood and Hounslow showed the penalties of inadequate field length and the inability of contemporary aircraft to achieve a positive engine-out performance, said Mr Masefield. Until 1936—by which time Croydon, then London's terminal, had achieved a field length of 4,140ft— none of the transport aircraft in service operated from fields large enough to offer safety if an engine failed at a critical point. For several years the famous HP.42 Heracles and DC-2s were flown from Croydon under inadequate safety conditions, judged by modern "accelerate/stop" dis tance standards. Only with the DC-3 and the extension of the field by 1936 were modern balanced field-length stan dards achieved. Mr Masefield turned from airfield lengths to airport economics. Between 1946 and 1971 Heathrow had consumed a cumulative capital investment (excluding the airlines' investments) of £83 million, and 137 million terminal pas sengers had been handled—a capital investment per pas senger of 65p. Total cumulative investment at Croydon was £750,000 over 20 years, during which about one million passengers were handled—a per capita investment of 75p. But by relating both sets of investment to 1971 values a truer picture evolved—capital cost for every passenger at Croydon was £3 • 3, but at Heathrow, so far, was £0 • 825. Croydon was run consistently at a loss; Heathrow had been profitable since 1962. The economics of scale were again apparent. In 1935 Croydon cost about £250,000 to operate and revenues were about £50,000. Some 120,000 passengers were handled in 45,000 movements. Again re lated to 1971 values, the respective comparative figures for o/ / Egyptair is the new name of United Arab Airlines, adopted on October 10. The change follows the adoption by Egypt of the official name Arab Republic of Egypt, in place of United Arab Republic. The airline's flight prefix code, MS (unchanged), dates from an earlier period when it was known as Misrair. lata environment recommendations The newly formed lata Environment Protection Advisory Committee has re commended the practice of taxying with one or more powerplants shut down. This reduces the pollution because combustion efficiency is greater at the higher thrusts then required than it is at the slow or idle thrust settings needed with all engines operating. Fuel consumption is therefore also reduced. F.28 noise certification The Fokker F.28 Fellowship will be certificated to FAR Part 36 noise requirements shortly. At its 65,0001b, 29,480kg maximum take-off weight the air craft produces less than the 93EPNdB allowed by the FAA regulations for fly-over noise at 3-5 n.m. from the threshold, according to Fokker-VFW. Approach and side line noise are also reported to be below the 102EPNdB allowed. Croydon and Heathrow were £24-4 and £72 for every air craft movement, but £9 • 15 and only £1 • 24 for every pas senger handled. Croydon registered a net loss per aircraft movement of £19-6 and per passenger of £7-33, while Heathrow's profits (£4,979,000 for 1970-71) were £18-5 and £0 • 32 respectively. Data presented on the engineering costs of airlines showed a remarkable consistency through the years when expressed as a percentage of total running costs. Cur rently they are running at 15-5 per cent for UK-based long-haul services, 18-5 per cent for UK-based short-haul services and 14-5 per cent for the whole US scheduled airline industry. The total engineering cost of the British air transport industry for 1970, scheduled and charter, was about £67 million for some 3,400 million capacity ton- miles—or 1 • 97p per CTM. Mr Masefield forecast British airline production in 1980 at about 8,500 million CTM and engineering costs, on today's values, at l-46p per CTM, or £124 million p.a. En gineering employment in the industry, he predicted, would rise from last year's 16,000 (of which BOAC and BEA employed about 6,600 each) to about 29,000 in 1980. CTM per engineering employee would rise by 33 per cent from last year's 226,000 CTM to about 300,000. Even allowing for an increase in reliability of equipment, said Mr Mase field, there were going to be 13,000 new engineering jobs in the industry and the number of licensed aircraft main tenance engineers would rise from 5,750 this year to about 10,000. After the productivity of men, Mr Masefield turned to the productivity of aircraft—reviewing 12 representative transports from Sholto Douglas's first commercial mount, the 1919 Handley Page 0/400 (65,000 CTM p.a.), through the 1931 Heracles (514,000 CTM p.a.), the 1946 DC-4 with 4-07 million CTM, to the current Boeing 747-121 with no fewer than 94-4 million CTM a year. It was a sad commentary on the corporate management of world affairs, the lecturer said, that we were moving through a period of acute economic difficulties in the air line business at a time in which aircraft were inherently more economic and flexible than ever before in terms of range and payload. Much remained to be done on many fronts, not least the simplification of the present appalling complexity of air Fares. Aircraft and engines had become more complex but easier to understand as a result of higher investment in the job and more understanding of methods. But the marketing side had become more complex and more diffi cult to administer. This suggested that engineers could teach the selling side something. R.R.R. Engineering environment
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