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Aviation History
1988
1988 - 3618.PDF
New Red Arrows named Three new pilots have joined the Royal Air Force aerobatic team, the Red Arrows, in readi ness for the 1989 season when the team will revert to its usual nine-ship formation. Fit Lt Martin Cliff, previously a Harrier instructor at Wittering, is Red Three. Fit Lt Al Hoy, who instructed on Hawks at Valley, is Red Two, and Fit Lt John Newton, the new Red Nine, joins from Brawdy, where he was a Hawk weapons instructor. 1988 team members who have left are Sqn Ldr Pete Collins, to the Empire Test Pilot's School, Sqn Ldr Adrian Thurley to Hawks at the Brawdy Tactical Weapons Unit, and Fit Lt Mike Carter to RAF Wittering for a Harrier course. Sqn Ldr Henry Ploszek, the team manager and commen tator who flew Red Ten, the spare aircraft, has a new appointment as Air Adviser to the Bahrain Amiri Air Force, and is replaced on the team by Sqn Ldr Andy Stewart, who The new Red Arrows members are fl-rj John Newton, Andy Stewart, Al Hoy, and Martin Cliff flew Phantoms with 56(F) Sqn at Wattisham. The 1989 line-up is: 1 Sqn Ldr Tim Miller— Team leader 2 Fit Lt Al Hoy 3 Fit Lt Martin Cliff 4 Fit Lt Guy Bancroft-Wilson 5 Fit Lt Dom Riley 6 Fit Lt John Rands Synchro-pair 7 Fit Lt Steve Johnson Synchro-pair 8 Sqn Ldr Jeff Glover Deputy leader 9 Fit Lt John Newton 10 Sqn Ldr Andy Stewart- Team manager NEWS IN BRIEF A Robinson R.22 rolled on to its side when its pilot attempted to take off from a grassy slope. It is the eighth machine of this type to have rolled over while manoeuvring close to the ground since June 1985, says a UK Department of Transport report. It has reported the "abnormally high" incidence of similar R.22 accidents to the Civil Aviation Auth ority. The Royal New Zealand Air Force has won the 1988 Fincastle Trophy for anti submarine warfare. The 5Sqn crew flying a Lock heed P-3K Orion competed against ASW crews from Australia (P-3C Orion), Canada (CP-140 Aurora) and Britain (Nimrod) and narrowly beat the Canadians into second place. Loganair has applied to the Civil Aviation Authority for licences to operate alongside British Airways on four Scottish highlands and islands routes. The move is in retaliation to BA's decision to return to their Edinburgh-Manchester route after dropping it about six years ago. Although Loganair has been operating air services in the Scottish highlands and islands since 1962, it currently has access to only one of the top ten routes in the region. The remaining nine are operated solely by BA's Highland division. Ferranti has delivered the first Harrier GR.5 video recording system. The 8mm-format colour video camera records the pilot's view through the headup display plus multi-plexed data from the TV/laser angle rate bombing system. Ferranti will also supply ground-based replay equipment. FPT Industries, a Westland Technologies subsidiary, has won a $1 -8 million contract to supply 100 shipsets of emergency flotation gear for US Navy/Marine Corps Boeing CH-46 Sea Knights. E-Systems has received a $13 million contract to develop the advanced tactical air reconnais sance system (Atars) to be fitted on US Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy aircraft. E-Systems' Greenville division will design, develop, and install aircraft modifications necessary to accommodate the equipment in all the aircraft types earmarked for Atars. Japan received its ninth and tenth Lockheed C-130H Hercules transports at Nagoya Air Base in November. Three more will be delivered late next year, and another two will be ordered before March 1989. The Japanese Government is being sued by the families of Maj Naoki Oki and Maj Kazutoshi Ogata, who were killed on May 8, 1987, in a Japan Air Self-Defence Force Mitsubishi T-2. The JASDF found that the accident was caused by a fire arising from incorrect maintenance of the fuel system. The two families are claiming damages of $800,000 and $900,000 respectively. Texas Instruments has deliv ered the first AGM-88 high speed anti-radar missile (Harm) 4 Block guidance section, which, it claims, will ensure that Harm is capable of countering threats of the 1990s and beyond. Instructor shortage looms UK pilot training organisations cannot meet the growing demand for trained pilots, because the airline hiring boom is stripping them of instructors. The Oxford Air Training School, a leading UK supplier of pilots, says demand is double capacity, but there are no instructors available to allow expansion. The school is fully booked for three years and has 200 students, says manager Hugh John. Peter Godwin of the Leavesden Flight Centre, a smaller training organisation, says, "Our expansion has been held back by a shortage of instrument rated instructors". General-aviaiton operators, which have also lost many pilots to the airlines, believe that the hiring boom is to some degree self-defeating because civil instructors are among the first applicants for airline jobs. "They want to be airline pilots, not instructors," maintains David Martin of British Aero space's pilot training school. British Airways' current effort to find pilots, in which it has pushed the' applicant age limit from 38 years to 47, is unprecedented in the last 30 years, and is likely to suck in more general-aviation pilots, operators predict. The pilot shortage is now worldwide, with no remaining pools to fish, alleges Martin. Another obstacle to increased training is the approaching saturation of air traffic control capacity, says Godwin. "Additional training work will be hard to fit in." Speaking at a conference of the UK General Aviation Manufacturers and Traders Association (Gamta), Colin Beckwith of the Civil Aviation Authority's flightcrew licensing department claimed that the airline industry had a "very bad" record in matching pilot supply with demand. "Two years ago he attempted to convince airlines to boost training. Most did not want to know." According to Beckwith, exam failure rates have risen, indi cating a fall in training stan dards. Most in the training industry see no relief in the next year. 32 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 17 December 1988
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