FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1978
1978 - 0019.PDF
. RJGWI In - tatty 1978 \ iiiis ger appeal and operating costs would show up as well in practice as in theory. The last item was particularly important because Eastern, like many other airlines, believes that in a per fect world the A300 would be a little smaller than it is— about the size of the projected A300B10. Eastern accepts however that even if the A300 checks out in service, and a suitable financial package can be set up, it has to re- g*! place the rest of its fleet by the end of the 1980s and cannot afford to wait for the BIO to meet the bulk of its requirement. Finally it was agreed in May that four white-tail A300B4s would be sold by Airbus Industrie to the Bank of America, which via its subsidiary Bamerilease would gjjj lease the aircraft back tp Airbus Industrie Leasing Corpor- jM ation. AI Leasing would then sub-lease the. aircraft to Eastern, which would put the aircraft: through an evalua- |j5 tion without parallel in air transport history. The Airbus experiment is the first application of "fly- before-buy" on the commercial side of the industry. The BR effort involved in introducing a new type into an airline within six months of the decision, and in operating a single batch of four aircraft from the first day at the ultimate target utilisation, is quite remarkable even for one of the US big five trunk airlines. "Throwing the air craft info the fire," was one description of the test pro gramme. Eastern executives contrast the introduction of the ilfe :N A300 with that of the TriStar, though admittedly the latter 61! was at a much earlier stage in its service career. The TriStar was brought in at initially low levels of utilisation, with a spare aircraft in reserve. Eastern still has a spare aircraft to back up its TriStar fleet,' in fact, and it's average utilisation is still lower than that planned for the A300 on the current six-month trial. Training is one of the main high-load areas in the A300 test programme. It is also one of many areas in which the European organisation—represented in this case by train ing company Aeroformation—has benefited from contact with Eastern. It was decided that 26 crews would be needed for the A300. The first meetings with Aeroformation took place in mid-April, and Eastern quickly found itself involved in the training programme. The basic difference between the Aeroformation pro gramme and the Eastern philosophy is that the European company's course is geared to a fairly low starting level of experience. In many cases crew come to> Aeroformation with very little or no service jet experience. Eastern, on the other hand, was drawing A300 crews from its pool of experienced 727 personnel. Following the first meetings in Toulouse, Aeroformation visited Miami to study Eastern's transitional training methods. A return visit in May allowed Aeroformation to set up a training scheme better suited to Eastern's needs. The US Federal Aviation Administration approved the new scheme on May 25 and the first Eastern course started their training the next day. Compared with the standard Aeroformation course, the PW~ mSi- as •wxi wk itiililtespitii -fri'^Tf/V a leleil mm It ill LgpiiipP MMjti •Mb fffc w EMPV* rr "#fc-r*n M«y.. ,.; iff
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
