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Aviation History
1977
1977 - 3395.PDF
Air jjgnsgfjj Tu-144 enters passenger service AEROFLOT inaugurated supersonic scheduled passenger services between Moscow and Alma Ata on November 1. Tupolev Tu-144 SSSR-77109 lifted off from Moscow Domodedovo at 0902hr local time and landed at Alma Ata at HOlhr, having covered the 1,750 n.m. route in just under two hours. Only 80 of the 140 seats on the Tu-144 were filled for the inaugural flight, captained by test pilot Boris Kuznetsov. The service will be weekly. Aeroflot plans to expand supersonic services to Tashkent and Khabarovsk, but this may have to await the com pletion of modification work on the Tu-144s. According to Soviet Aviation Minister Boris Bugaev, "reinforcing work" will continue until January. No problems are foreseen with the overland sonic boom on the present route and other supersonic flights within the Soviet Union. "It's just like a thunderclap, and not a completely new phenomenon," comments designer Alexei Tupolev. Western observers, however, reacted unfavourably to the noise inside the cabin, attributed to air-conditioning and the proximity of the powerplants to the fuselage. This was admitted to be a problem area, with cabin noise some 5dB higher than on the Tu-154 trijet. According to UPI, the rear of the cabin was "almost unbearably noisy." Tupolev declined to comment on the number of Tu-144s built to date, but the registration of the aircraft used for the inaugural places it among the small batch—eight to ten aircraft at most — of production - standard Tu-144s completed so far. UK air traffic control assistants end strike BRITAIN'S striking air traffic control assistants ended their ten-week-long dispute last week. Striking members of the Civil and Public Services Associa tion voted to accept a pay offer from the Civil Aviation Authority which will give them an immediate lump sum payment of £315 and a possible rise of up to 18 per cent on April 1. The strike is believed to have cost the union £300,000 but resulted in a revenue loss for British Airways of around £30 million and around £1 mil lion for British Caledonian. British Airways lost about £15 million net in the engineering dispute earlier this year and, despite assurances on . job security, the latest ATC strike and a series of minor disturbances within the airline have brought the prospect of large-scale redundancies nearer. Discussions in 1975 between the CAA and the CPSA on a package including job regrading and a 17 per cent pay rise were blocked by Govern ment pay policy; these negotiations were at the centre of the present strike. Last week's agreement indicates that the 1975 proposals will be imple mented when pay policy allows, but will not be backdated. The rise ex pected in April 1978 will comprise 4 per cent plus any general rise negotiated for CAA staff. The CPSA anticipates that the general rise will be around the present policy limit of 10 per cent. An additional increase of up to 4 per cent may be paid if the overall increase in the CAA's wage bill is below 10 per cent. British Airways introduced its winter timetable on November 1 and says that because fewer flights are involved no cancellations were anticipated from now on even if the assistants' strike had continued. The shortage of Trident 3 capacity because of wing fatigue problems (see Flight for August 13) has been met by the lease of a 737 from Transavia and a DC-9 from Finnair. Eleven Trident 3s had been modified and returned to service by the end of last week, joining the four examples which did not need repair. The remaining ten aircraft should be modified by the end of the year. Some aircraft which have been fitted with only one or two strengthen ing plates (see Flight for October 1) will have to be grounded again for
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