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Aviation History
1979
1979 - 0014.PDF
12 Letters GA's Continental courtesies SIR—How is it that a landing and three hours of parking at Humber- side on December 6 cost £19 for a light twin, while landing and over night parking at Biarritz, for example, cost £2-50 for the same aircraft? The next stop was Jerez, where a landing and overnight parking cost just 50p. The European airports also offered TVOR, ILS and invaluable built-in tie-down rings, while courteous staff were always there to chock the air craft and guide the traveller through control. An even more noticeable advantage is the short-notice weather informa tion available. It is standard on the Continent to present the traveller with a met decode docket in two languages; instant print-out of the general weather in Europe and the UK; in stant print-out for lower and medium- level winds; and a sheet of advisory notes in two languages for the VFR pilot across Europe. There is no de mand anywhere on the Continent for two- or four-hour notice. What can be done about improving the quality of airport service to general aviation in Britain? j. c. JONES Can Handling Developments, King's Lynn, Norfolk PE30 2JS Seventy years a "Flight" reader SIR—I am now 88 and I have read Flight since your first issue. I knew your first editor Mr Spooner very well. Wonderful paper. I wish you all the best on your 70th birthday. I started in aviation as an appren tice engineer at Filton in 1911 with the British and Colonial Aeroplane Company. I was posted to Gnome- Rhone near Paris and made many French friends. It was the beginning of a long association with French aviation which has found its supreme expression in Concorde. My French partner then was Andre Bayle, who today lives near Orly. We still see each other. I worked for Sir Thomas Sopwith at Kingston for ten years. Good luck! Times are not easy, but then they never were. What days! My love to you all and keep up the wonderful work. HAROLD SOLOMON 128 Hendford Hill, Yeovil, Somerset FLIGHT International, 6 January 1979 And now the instructor shortage SIR—Much has been made of the pilot shortage in this country. At the same time, it has been indicated that one of the major factors in accidents is pilot error. The most important factor in reducing pilot-error accidents is the quality of training which a pilot re ceives. But there is such a shortage of experienced instructors (at my organisation we have half the instruc tors we need for the number of students on the books) that the com mercial schools have been trying for some time to persuade the CAA to allow PPL instructors to be used on commercial training. Poor pay is to blame for this inability to get and keep experienced instructors. For ex ample, I recently trained an ex-PPL instructor for his Instrument Rating. His starting salary, with the ink still wet on his rating, was £1,500 a year greater than mine, despite the great disparity in experience. The commercial schools are grossly overloading their instructors. A CAA- approved school is supposed to have a maximum of six students per in structor, whereas we have had up to 11 students per instructor. This naturally leads to poor continuity, with a con sequent reduction in training quality. Thus if the schools get their way we could end up with inexperienced in structors teaching far too many students, and what will that do for air safety in the future? W.FULLER 118 ScotbyRoad, Scotby, Carlisle Both ways on the airways SIR—With reference to recent corre spondence about charges on general aviation for en route ATC services, it would appear that our lords and masters want the penny and the bun. They require payment for the use of en route services and at the same time expect general aviation to con tribute to the provision and upkeep of the roads through the tax on Avgas. One or the other, please, but not both. W. H. ENTRESS Entress Transport, 143/159 Peniel Green Road, Llansamlet, • Swansea SA7 9BB Rhodesian Viscount loss SIR—We were surprised to read in Flight for October 28, 1978, that Rho desia was claiming that the Viscount destroyed by terrorists was shot down by a BAe Rapier fired by Zambian regular forces. In fact, no source here directly associated with the incident claimed that it was a Rapier. As soon as it was established that the aircraft had been brought down by an SA.7 missile, this information was released on television and in the local news paper. I. M. EVANS Pilots Association of Rhodesia, PO Box 3158, Salisbury, Rhodesia IN BRIEF The Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force will be presented with a squad ron standard by the Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Crawford Murray Macle- hose, on March 3, 1979, at the squad ron's new headquarters at Hong Kong International Airport. Any past mem ber of the RHKAAF or RAF who would like to receive an invitation to the presentation is invited to write to the Commanding Officer, Royal Hong Kong Auxiliary Air Force, c/o Civil Aviation Department, Hong Kong Air port, Kowloon, Hong Kong. WHAT'S ON Jan 7-13 Helicopter Association of America: Management Course IX; Las Vegas Hilton Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; telephone Robert A. Richardson, (202) 466-2420. Jan 8-19 University of Southern California, Institute of Safety and Systems Management; Course on Helicopter Accident Investigation; Los Angeles, USA. Jan 9-11 University of New Haven, Department of Aeronautical Technology: Chief Flight Instructor Seminar; West Haven, Conn, USA. Contact University of New Haven, Division of Continuing Education, 300 Orange Avenue, West Haven, Conn 06516, USA. Jan 10 London Society of Air-Britain: "Library services for research into aviation and trans port," by Michael Silverstone (Holborn Library), "The role of the fighter in air warfare," by James J. Halley; 7 p.m., Holborn Central Library, 32-38 Theobalds Road, London WC1; telephone Charles Oman, 02934 71262. Jan 14-17 Helicopter Association of America: 31st Annual Meeting, Convention and Industry Showcase; Las Vegas Hilton Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; telephone Robert A. Richardson, (202) 466-2420. Correspondence for these pages should be addressed to the Editor, Flight International, Dorset House, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LU, and marked "For Publication." Letters should preferably be no more than 300 words long. We reserve the right to edit all correspondence.
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