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Aviation History
1978
1978 - 1568.PDF
514 FLIGHT International, 19 August 1978 W rid news Court bans airport standby sales THE, British Airports Authority (BAA) obtained a temporary High Court in junction last week to prevent TWA from selling standby tickets at Heath row Airport. Interline passengers arriving at Heathrow will still be allowed to buy standbys on produc tion of their existing tickets. The in junction expires on October 15 (by which time the peak period for travel to the USA will he over, but the BAA intends to seek a permanent ban on standby sales at the airport. In a joint statement after the hear ing, TWA agreed to abide by the in junction. The court action had been precipitated by TWA's defiance, after the other airlines had complied, of BAA requests to stop selling standbys at Heathrow. The BAA claims that the injunction was necessary to prevent the congestion caused at Heathrow's Terminal 3 by travellers queueing for unavailable standby seats. TWA denied that this was the case but agreed to leave resolution of the ques tion to the regulatory authorities. The airline considers that it is not the BAA's job to decide how and where standbys should be sold, seeing this as the responsibility of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the British Government. The present standby experiment ends in October, when it will be re viewed by the CAA in consultation with the airlines and the BAA. One possibility is that the sale of standby tickets will be banned altogether dur ing peak periods such as the summer months, Christmas and Easter. The major transatlantic carriers feel that such a move would amount to overkill in view of the fact that the recent troubles were concentrated into an exceptional two-week period at the end of July and the beginning of August. The long queues of standby hope fuls had all but disappeared by the end of last week, and travellers arriv ing at the central London terminals of British Airways, Pan Am and TWA were able to get tickets on the same day. TWA, which had no standbys at all during the last week of July, was able to sell 100-200 tickets a day last week. The airline thinks that standbys are here to stay but are too cheap at present, and has applied for increases of 10-15 per cent on tickets to US destinations. Tornado weapons school to come to UK RRTTTSH anH Gprman Tnrnarlrv rrpws hut mnc*- r»f fho \urvrh r\^r\ w BRITIS d Germa Tornado crews will carry out weapons training at RAF Honington rather than in Sardinia, as was originally assumed when planning began in October 1975. Further studies have shown that the Italian facility lacks both sufficient range and aircraft-handling capacity for a programme involving all three Tornado customer air forces: the RAF, Luftwaffe and Italian AF. Italian crews will train in Sardinia, but most of the workload will be handled at Honington. An Air Crew Course Design Team consisting of an RAF crew and one from the Luftwaffe is drawing up a detailed syllabus for the programme; it is hoped that an Italian crew will join the team later. Operational conversion training for the three nations will still take place at RAF Coningsby, where the Tri- National Tornado Training Establish ment will be based. Farnborough's flying newcomers FRANCE'S Dassault Mirage 2000 and the Spanish Casa Aviojet—both making their public debuts—are among almost one hundred types expected by the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) at next month's third fully international Farn- borough Show (September 3-10). More than 20 types will be new to the event. A provisional list and other show details appear on page 544 of this issue. Other Farmborough first-timers in clude: Boeing Vertol CH-47 Chinook, Dassault Mirage F.l, de Havilland Canada Dash 7, Embraer's Bandeirante and Xingu, Hughes 500MD, Aeritalia G.222, Norman Firecracker, Cranfield Al, Grumman Turbo AgCat and Cougar, Aerospatiale AS.350 Ecureuil, FMA Pucara, Piper Tomahawk and BAe's Sea Harrier (thought to be set for a maiden flight during the last week of August). More than 450 companies from 16 countries are taking part, including, for the first time, exhibitors from Argentina and Brazil. Some 30,000 guests representing more than 100 nations have been invited by SBAC. Hundreds of advance bookings for the public days (September 8-10) have been received from international tour operators, according to the organisers. Concorde to Mexico AIR FRANCE will inaugurate a twice- weekly Paris-Mexico City Concorde service on September 20. The service will be an extension of Paris-Washing ton, and will be 6hr faster than the fastest subsonic Paris-Mexico flight. The return flight will be the only day- flight connection between the two cities. The outbound flights will be exten sions of the Wednesday and Sunday Paris-Washington services. The Wash ington-Mexico City sector will be flown partly at supersonic speed over the Gulf of Mexico, saving lhr com pared with a subsonic flight. Tankers top up Salyut 6 IN a flurry of activity earlier this month two Progress supply craft car ried out manoeuvres with the Salyut 6 and brought the Soviet space station a third load of fuel and equipment. Progress 2, which docked with Salyut 6 on July 9, was separated from the laboratory at 7.57 a.m. Moscow Time on August 2 and returned to atmos pheric destruction two days later. On August 4 the docked Salyut/Soyuz 29 combination performed an orbital cor rection, after which cosmonauts Kovalyonok and Ivanchenkov con ducted more experiments with the Kristall furnace delivered by Pro gress 2. Progress 3 was launched on August 8 at 1.35 a.m. Moscow Time to carry additional supplies to Salyut 6. This latest flight is the ninth mission asso ciated with Salyut 6; the total com prises the aborted flight of Soyuz 25, the manned ferry missions of Soyuz 26 to 30, and the three Progress tanker launches. RB.211 chalks up four million hours ROLLS-ROYCE RB.211 flying time now totals more than four million hours. Some 650 units have been de livered, of which about ten per cent are 50,0001b-thrust -524s. Average daily utilisation of the TriStar—the largest RB.211 application—is 7.67hr, with an average sector of 1.91hr. Total flying time for the Pegasus turbofans fitted to RAF Harriers, f j USMC AV-8s and Spanish Matadors has passed the 200,000hr mark. Some 420 Pegasus have been built.
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