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Aviation History
1976
1976 - 0358.PDF
518 FLIGHT International, 6 March 1976 Boeing QSRA impression, showing four overwing engines and double- slotted flaps for upper-surface blowing AIR TRANSPORT BOEING WINS STOL RESEARCH CONTRACT BOEING has won a $20 million National Aeronautics and Space Administration contract to convert a de Havilland C-8A Buffalo to a quiet, short-haul research aircraft (QSRA). The Boeing QSRA will join the augmentor-wing Buffalo, also converted by Boeing. QSRA will use the same propulsive-lift technology as the Boeing YC-14 military transport, with a new wing and tail unit and new engines added to the Buffalo fuselage. Four Avco Lycoming YF102s (military ALF 502s) will be fitted; part of the air from the powerplants will be used for flap and aileron blowing. The QSRA wing has double-slotted flaps, conventional ailerons and spoilers. The new, Nasa-supplied tail unit has a double-hinged rudder. QSRA will fly in the second half of 1978 and will be handed over to Nasa after preliminary flight-testing by Boeing. CAA EASES CARGO RULES THE Civil Aviation Authority plans to liberalise its rules on air-freight charter services. The publication last autumn of the consultative document International Air Freight Services (see Flight for October 9, page 520) drew a response from carriers and customers alike, and the result ing discussions have pointed the need for further statistical work on the demand for freight services. Sufficient work has however already been done, says the CAA, to demonstrate that its developing policy is soundly based. The Authority intends to avoid disruptive regulatory changes as far as possible but is intent on reducing the competitive disadvantages suffered by UK carriers. The minimum consignment size for standard and specific licences (Class 6A) is to be reduced to 500kg (with consoli dation below this figure prohibited) and to avoid confusion specific licences will be redesignated Class 6D. But a year long experimental exception is proposed on the cabotage route to Hong Kong, on which no rules controlling mini mum consignment size or prohibiting consolidation would apply. Scheduled-service freight rates are already unregu lated on this route, and carriers are free to respond to competition as they see fit. The CAA's policy of favouring the scheduled airlines over the charter carriers underlines the importance it attaches to- the question of scheduled-service freight tariffs. The Authority considers that a more rational rate structure should be developed for international scheduled services and confirms that it will do all it can to help British scheduled carriers. While carriage-of-livestock licences will remain in their present form, the fifth-freedom conditions applying to through-cargo services are seen as an unreasonable restraint upon UK operators, particularly as there is no practical way of restraining foreign carriers from benefit ing from the same traffic. The Authority has no plan to limit either the number of operators or the number of cargo flights, but these new policy directions will act as a guideline when the Authority is considering future freight-charter applications. That the policy favours scheduled-service carriers is underlined by Mr Alan Stocks, managing director of IAS Cargo Airlines. He sees the UK-Hong Kong cabotage route experiment as illogical and unrepresentative, and is dis appointed that after two years of deliberations the CAA is still seeking statistics rather than spelling out a long- term policy for air freight. SKYTRAIN: BRITISH GOVERNMENT REPLIES THE British Government's review of civil aviation policy- was approved by the House of Commons last week. An opposition motion in favour of the Laker Airways Skytrain service was defeated by 262 votes to 232. Simultaneously, perhaps needled by Mr Freddie Laker's charge that the Department of Trade "just did not have the figures" to justify the withdrawal of the Skytrain licence, the British Government has issued a note on the balance-of-payments effects of Skytrain. Central to the DoT estimates is the assumption that a US operator would start a Skytrain service simultaneously with Laker. The DoT also warns that it would be hard to resist claims that other carriers with traffic rights on London - New York (Air-India, for example) should be allowed to offer a service on the same conditions. Similar services would be inaugurated between New York and other European destinations. Competing scheduled airlines on the North Atlantic would either start their own Sky train- type flights or introduce a Skytrain fare on scheduled operations (which might be rather like the European standby fare). This, comments the DoT, "would be likely to lead to further difficulties over agreeing North Atlantic fares." It would be inequitable, continues the DoT, to refuse other independent operators the opportunity to compete with Laker on his own terms. "Once again, this would lead to lower load factors and higher prices." Finally, the DoT warns that "the situation created by these various reactions would be unstable. After a period of chaos, the eventual result would probably be either that all subsonic services between London and New York would be of the Skytrain type (although at a much higher price level) or that conditions would return to something like the status quo." The DoT does not attempt to evaluate the cash impact of such competition, and contents itself with analysing the effect of Laker's service and a US competitor. Skytrain services of the type expected by the DoT would add over half-a-million seats to the London-New York market. At an 80 per cent load factor this represents one-third of the traffic carried by scheduled and charter services in 1974. The crucial question however is diversion. Laker claimed from the outset that all Skytrain traffic would be newly generated, but the DoT observes that the market has lost elasticity since 1972 and that the scheduled carriers have made advance-purchase excursion (Apex) fares available since that time. Laker expected that up to 80 per cent of his traffic would be US-originating, but since the grant of the Skytrain licence the US Civil Aeronautics Board has moved towards a liberalisation of rules on low-cost air travel, with the introduction of one-stop tour charters and the proposal of UK-style advance-booking charters. The argument that the low-fare market in the US is inadequately tapped is less powerful now than it was four years ago. The DoT assumes that only 25 per cent of Skytrain traffic would be newly generated. Laker remains convinced that diversion will be "minimal" because of the spartan service, the absence of any guarantee of passage and the use of Stansted airport. The DoT concludes that the Laker and US Skytrains
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