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Aviation History
1977
1977 - 0058.PDF
52 FLIGHT International, 8 Januarr 1977 Ford rejects CAB Atlantic plan PRESIDENT FORD has rejected a Civil Aeronautics Board plan to in crease the number of US airlines operating scheduled services on the North Atlantic and to introduce direct transatlantic services to more US cities. Foreign policy considerations, including the British denunciation of the Bermuda Agreement, have been cited as the reasons for the President's decision. The rejection leaves US negotiators free to act on the renegotiation of the Bermuda Agreement. Announcing the decision, the White House advised the CAB to reconsider its policy and to look in particular at the possibility of using more European destinations rather than concentrating on services from US cities to British gateways. The President clearly wants to play down the importance of the UK mar ket to the US airlines, with the aim of weakening the British bargaining position in the current Bermuda 2 talks. The CAB decision in the trans atlantic route case was passed to the President in July after the British denunciation of Bermuda. Delta Air Lines and Northwest Orient were recommended as additional trans atlantic carriers, and no fewer than 11 new gateways were recommended, mostly in the southern and central USA. New destinations were to include Atlanta, Tampa, New Orleans, Cleve land, Pittsburg, St Louis, Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St Paul, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth. The majority of the new gateways would have been linked to London initially, although services to Scotland and other European countries were con templated. CAB chairman Mr John Robson dissented from the decision, passed 3-1 by the four-man Board, on the grounds that it would weaken the existing US carriers. Delta Air Lines, which would have been awarded Atlanta-London with "through-plane" rights to Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, has interpreted the outgoing President's rejection as a political move against the southern states. "In my opinion," comments Delta chairman W. T. Beebe, "this is a good way to slap the South, which rebuffed the President in the elec tion." TWA on the other hand regards the rejection as "a step in the right direction." FAA spells out retrofit timetable ON JANUARY 1 the US Federal Aviation Administration started the countdown for compliance with the US noise standards set out in Part 36 of the Federal Aviation Regulations. The cost of retrofit is not the concern of the new rules, but US Transporta tion Secretary Mr William T. Coleman is due to make recommendations on financing the retrofit programme before he leaves office on January 20. The new regulation covers all US- registered commercial aircraft weigh ing 75,0001b or more, with the very important exception of aircraft flown by US airlines on international routes. The latter will follow a compliance timetable which has yet to be estab lished, as will aircraft of foreign air lines operating into the USA. The bulk of the retrofit programme is likely to involve the modification of twinjets and trijets: DC-9s, One- Elevens, 737s, 727s, TriStars and DC-lOs. The last two already meet Tarom's first BAC One-Eleven flew from Hum on December 20, the first One-Eleven maiden flight since June 1974. The aircraft is the first production One-Eleven to carry hush-kits FAR 36. The 727 and the US twinjets can all meet FAR 36 with the addi tion of acoustic linings around the inlets and nacelles, and the One-Eleven can be modified with multi-chute silencers and absorbent materials. The entire fleet must be modified by January 1, 1983. Half the fleet must be modified by the beginning of 1981. Cost of a 727 hush-kit, for instance, is in the order of $65,000. The easiest part of the retrofit pro gramme covers modifications to early 747-lOOs which in their initial form do not quite meet the FAR 36 limits. Later 747-lOOs and 747-200s have a modified cowling^with acoustic treat ment and a different inlet design lacking blow-in doors—which can be retrofitted to the early aircraft. The schedule for the 747 is the same as that for the trijets. Modification of DC-8s and 707/720- series aircraft is however a much more complex question. Boeing has already certificated a new, quiet nacelle for the 707/720 which brings the later JT3D-powered aircraft within FAR 36. But the company estimates that it will take at least 28 months to put the nacelle into production. Even
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