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Aviation History
1982
1982 - 2385.PDF
Hey, don't forget your wheels Brian • At old Warden the other day I bumped into Shuttle- worth demonstrator Dicky Martin, one of the old-school test pilots. He will probably be the first man since Clous- ton in 1938 to fly a D.H.88. I wonder if I am the first man since 1918 to hear a pilot say "I'm toddling around in the S.E.5 today." • From McDonnell Douglas press release 82-141: "On a recent night flight, the pilot of McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle flew his jet fighter over the blackness of a Florida test range and dropped his bomb squarely on an army tank target. He was guided to his target by an advanced radar that can see at night ..." . or was it your floats? (sorree, dunno WIH1H) |||PI|!|! iilllllliii ; ".'» » :•"' ••-'i p."'" 'i .•IUJ TT~J"' !"•'"•'• • ,.'~T"' '••* «• -: iii'HUilsiJii'lUi" ' •-:• #;»"'' " ^"''*Hw H9HEHHBMHI jflHHBHflHHHMMB ', ••"I [udtWIlM «-!+?l*lij lit HiMiiSMlltftfl HKHHHHfc •HHHHMHHH NHHHHH •BHNMHHHHHI • i dlii 1 \'i ftSkw ^Jr'h fi'n? I! lil*' ''Jiii'iI i iti t f it]!' ii UsUffafflwteiiUMM. $iMWlta iMiifi ANGELA OBVIOUS • "Profit for efficient car riers—with the emphasis on efficient—is not a dirty word to us," says Air Transport Users Committee chairman Norman Ashton-Hill. He is one of 20 volunteer mem bers of this useful UK con sumer body, and he recalls British Airways' outrage when he said that the air line was overmanned. Re- member how similar Budgie News suggestions got the outrage treatment too? Efficiency yes, and Mother hood and Airships and Tiger Moths. But how odd that Norman doesn't mention the continuing lack of Civil Avi ation Authority data with which we can all MEASURE efficiency. The CAA's Ray Colegate says his job is to promote Efficiency. "Not the least im portant of these policies," he observes, "has been our sustained unwillingness to overprotect the airlines from the consequences of their own commercial decisions." Very wise, very wise. All the CAA has to do, Ray, is to insist on the pub lication of adult economic data. Not your current stale old Rollo statistics but freshly detailed costs, traffic, load factors, revenue, capital, and the number of free loaders bumped by fare-pay ing customers. Ten bits of professional operating data PUBLISHED now would be worth the next ten years of CAA regulation —the last ten having seen the sustained unwillingness to collapse of Court, Laker, British Airways, etc. Maritime Defence, January 1982 \An Osborne Atlantic 22 with single-point lunch/recovery system FLIGHT International, 16 October 1982 I • According to British Aero space combat-aircraft de signer Ivan Yates, "the com bat-aircraft selection process may even be considered to have broken down". The process hasn't broken down. It's doing fine, having long ago advanced beyond the point where whole fighter generations were talked away by 104 - neddy committees calling for feasibility studies which costed more in the end than prototypes—which I hope we shall not doom with Air Marshmallow terminology like Technology Demonstrators. • When volcanic ash from Mount St Helens laid a coat of fine grey powder over Northern America, and on most of the Coke-tins cruis ing above it, I vowed never to fly my Brian Moth again without first checking the daily volcano forecast. My engine splutters badly enough as it is. Sometime after the St Helens eruption, a volcano in the Pacific caused at least STRAIGHT AND LEVEL two jet-airliner captains to respond magnificently to sudden quietnesses. I think that their PR chaps would have been a little more magnificent if one of them hadn't subsequently said that it was the first time in 25 years he had heard of such a thing. A regular read of Budgie News would be a bit less expensive than £1,000,000 for a set ot new engines, leading edges, wind screens, pilots worry-beads, etc. • A colleague heard a Bel! Telephone commercial on US radio the other day with the punch-line: "It's the cheapest i way to fly the Atlantic." The i voice sounded very like that of—who else?—the irrepres- J sible Sir Freddie Laker. I • British Airways' loss of I £450 million is described by I a newspaper as "the biggest British airline loss ever". BOAC's £100 million in 1962 must be about £1,000 million in todays money. Thank goodness for the shortness of governing men's memories and of tax-collec tors sympathies. Stand by for £10,000 million to be announced by Sir Charles McGolfcronie, Sec retary of State for British Aeroflot, in 2002? ! reasonably satisfactorily. In the case of the latter however, the real requirement I lies in the determination of the respective I coefficients of each of the significant | variables for the derivation of a multiple regression equation exhibiting the func- I tional relationships between the several | relevant parameters and demand. Monara, Air Lanka, May- June 1982 • Did you know? ... "If the aviation industry had made the same progress in terms i of development and perform ance as the computer indus try, you would now be able to fly around the world in 21min for only £7. Contact Frank Algood, IBM, tel: 0705 694941." I think it would be cheaper to stay where you are for 21min and spend the £7 on aspirins for Frank. fag£* £*>*n~ 1135
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