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Aviation History
1986
1986 - 0100.PDF
LETTERS Savings versus safety? SIR—There has been pro longed debate about two-man crews, long-range twins, and the closing of emergency exits. The increased dangers are easy to identify but more difficult to quantify. The financial gains to the risk- taking passengers have not been made clear. It seems pertinent to ask "How many pounds do I save in accepting the additional risks?". In the absence of authoritative data, some recent figures from Flight offer scope for making some estimates. A Boeing advertisement (Flight, November 16) claims that dispensing with a flight engineer on the 757 saves up to $500,000 per year (say £350,000). This is not likely to be an underestimate. Assum ing that our 757 makes Boeing's 3-6 flights per day with a load factor of 49, adding a flight engineer to the crew would increase fares by £2-60 per passenger per flight, or about half of what we pay for the security checks intended to prevent hijacking. A 747 flying sectors twice as long and needing twice as many flight engineers, but carrying twice as many passengers, yields the same cost per passenger per flight. Saving £2-60 per flight in exchange for even a minute increase in risk seems a poor bargain. An alternative approach to the problem is to examine the cost of an accident. JAL has incurred costs of around $100 million as a result of the loss of a 747SR ($35 million for rescue, $70 million reduction in profit owing to lost traffic, Flight, November 16). Adding to this half the price of a new 747 and $100,000 compen sation per passenger gives a total of $200 million (say £140 million). If a 747 requires twice the crew of a 757 because of the greater number of hours flown, then providing flight engineers will cost £700,000 per aircraft per year. Thus, if once in 200 years each 747 (or, given a 20-year aircraft life, one 747 in ten) is saved by the presence of a flight engineer, then it has been cost effective to have employed flight engineers. Since there have been some 5,000 aircraft- years of 747 operations, it only requires 25 captains to each describe an incident where the flight engineer prevented disaster to justify their continuing to have someone who will kick the tyres, copy the weather, and watch the copilot while they go to the loo. Similar calculations indi cate that increasing fares by 0-5 per cent would generate the same extra revenue as removing two emergency exits. Perhaps my figures are quite wrong. If so, no doubt the airlines will be prepared to open their books and explain their decisions. But, unless my figures are out by almost an order of magnitude, it seems that airlines are making decisions which degrade margins of safety, to save sums of money which are trivial. PETER J. BORE 37 Quarry Road Headington Oxford Unhappy memories SIR—The Straight and Level item of November 30, about windshear training vis-a-vis collision avoidance, brought a couple of memories to mind. In the late 1960s I was taking off from a well-known minor UK SE airport at night and performance-limited, when it became apparent that the runway was obstructed. At approximately VR minus 15kt the magnificent HS.748 series 2 climbed away on the stick- shaker and, according to the nearest eyewitness on the ground, the No. 2 propeller missed the car by two feet. So much for airport security in those days, since the vehicle had entered the camp via lovers' lane, behind the hangars. My incident report was dismissed as "Making a bit of a fuss, aren't you?" by the fleet captain. In those days there was no windshear training, but I had a bit of practice getting Doves and DC-3s airborne at 45-50kt in the Libyan Desert to avoid the usual sand dune or old minefield. Windshear was hardly mentioned then, but I well remember a BOAC captain asking the Benina controller why he had not been informed about the extreme turbulence over the escarpment to the south-east of the field. His rather pained voice continued: "We were going down at 2,500ft per minute, and this is a VC10 at take-off power". I was about a mile behind the VC10 at 500ft trying to recover from a most unusual attitude in my Dove, engaged on a medical flight. It was the first, and I hope the last time that I lost all attitude refer ence, as my artificial horizon had toppled. I was lucky to be able to use the lights of Benghazi to roll back level, having been fortuitously turned about 160° in azimuth by the turbulence. I wouldn't care to estimate my bank angle, but it was well past 90°. Nowadays, operating modern second-generation jets, one sees jolly films about windshear, but curiously one doesn't seem to practise coping with it in the simulator as yet. The most obvious fact is that engine life is no longer worth considering in the event of incipient death, together with the splendid expression "If all else fails, firewall the thrust levers;" presumably an updated and transatlantic rendering of "Bang 'em through the gate, mate". FRANCIS NEWTON Finsmarick Wicken Bonhunt Essex CB11 3UL. Third Asian Aerospace Exhibition and Conference Changi International Airport, Singapore January 15-18, 1986 Visit us on the German joint venture stand in Hall 2. ASIAN M JEPPESEN CHARTS AEROSPACE'86 The most comprehensive charting service available: Airway Manual Services - Computerized Navigation Data - Pilot Supplies - Electronic Flight Computers - Pilot Training Materials - Technical Documentations - Aeronautical Information Publications. For details and service contact: Jeppesen & Co. GmbH, P.O. Box 160454, Kaiserstrasse 77, D-6000Frankfurt/Main-16, F.R.Germany, Tel.: 069-238030, Telex: 4-12529 94 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 4 January 1986
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