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Aviation History
2002
2002 - 0092.PDF
Diary 14-15 January Aviation Law/Insurance Symposium Daytona Beach, USA Contact: Bill Minter Tel:+1386 226 6186 minterb@cts.db.erau.edu www.erau-dce.org/alis 16-17 January Eurocontrol ASM Workshop on ECAC Airspace Harmonisation Brussels, Belgium Contact: Bernadette Tamo Tel: +32 2 729 33 66 bernadette.tamo@eurocontrol.int www.eurocontrol.int/eatmp/events 4-5 February Asian Airports 2002 Singapore Contact: Asia Business Forum Tel: +65 536 8676 info@abf.com.sg www.abf-asia.com 6-7 February ATC Maastricht Conference 2002 Maastricht, the Netherlands Contact: Rafal Kotowicz Tel:+44 (20) 8700 3841 conference@janes.co.uk www.conference.janes.co.uk 14-16 February HAI Heli-Expo 2002 Orlando, USA Tel:+1703 683 4646 www.rotor.com 19-20 February Human Resources 2002 Miami, USA Contact: Hayley Nash Smith Tel: +44 (20) 8607 6241 nashsmithh@iata.org 20 February Powering Future Vehicles Conference London, UK Contact: Claire Fitzpatrick Tel:+44 (1224) 263134 cfitzpatrick.rgu.ac.uk 18-22 February Geneva Aircraft Finance and Commerical Aviation Forum Geneva, Switzerland Contact: Helen Coetzee Tel:+44 (20) 7915 5618 hcoetzee@icbi.co.uk www.icbi-uk.com/aircraftfinance 26 February-3 March Asian Aerospace 2002 Singapore Contact: Andy Braley Tel:+44 (20) 8910 7746 andy.braley@reedexpo.co.uk flight.international@rbi.co.uk Letters Flight International welcomes letters on any aspect of the aerospace industry. Please write to: The Editor, Flight International, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS, UK. The opinions on this page do not necessarily represent those of the editor. Flight International cannot publish letters without name and address and reserves the right to select or edit letters. CONSOLIDATION We need our national airlines In your editorial (Flight International, 18 December 2001) you say that the airline industry will recover by "cool heads" and the termination of subsidies to "flabby national airlines". This is in sharp contrast to US thinking and is indicative of outdated European Union (EU) notions. The threat of the demise of the entire airline industry forced the USA to come to grips with notions that were suppressed in the name of liberalisaton. They had to rethink the fundamentals of the air transport sector. Economic spin-offs to other industries are multifold. US investment in space explo ration in the 1960s is an example from which one spin-off, the computer, was enough to create an entire new industry. There is also a national security element. If this "survival of the fittest" principle was applied in the farming industry it would soon become dependent on imports. In times of conflict this would have obvious implications. Likewise, a nation entirely dependent on the private sector, or on foreign carriers for its air transport needs, is in trouble in time of war. The "survival of the fittest" principle is a noble one - taxpayers should not have to support inefficiency - but there are more delicate ways of achieving this goal. One idea is the formation of a pan-European economic regulation authority. In concept this is sim ilar to the working principle upon which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is based. The IMF will bail a country out of economical trouble provided certain reforms are implemented, with the aim of getting it on the road to self sufficiency. Safety must also be addressed with regard to recovery. I have read many letters in your column expressing non-confidence in current security measures. The security measures that will make our industry attack-proof exist as El Al has demonstrated. Yet the political will to implement these measures is non-existent. The restoration of confi dence in air travel is a smarter way of protecting the taxpayer than doing away with weaker carriers. We should follow their example, deliver to our successors an industry at least as robust as we inherited, not one that has been "right-sized". Alexander Maroudis Athens, Greece Aerobatic flying solution While I agree with Mr Shroder on the training issues concerning recovery from unusual attitudes (Flight International, 11-17 December), I believe that aerobatic and/or glider flying during initial flight training could be part of the solution. Both mean flight attitudes which the average airline pilot would find unusual, initiation of manoeuvres and recovery from those attitudes and co-ordinated control response. On top of that, exposure to unusual flight attitudes will make a pilot less fearful and remove any element of surprise. The natural ness of smooth and firm handling of aircraft in all three axes is most easily acquired if given in basic flight training and like almost all forms of learning, behaviour trained at an early stage will become second nature and not forgotten easily. Peter Kraus Hamburg, Germany Tunnel vision The termination of BAE Systems' RJX programme, ending decades of production of indigenous UK com mercial jet designs, is but one example of the progressive with drawal of the UK from the fore front of aerospace developments. Mindful of the need to present itself on share flotation day as lean and unencumbered, QinetiQ, the privatised commercial part arising from the split of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency is helping by systematically discard ing some of the UK's prime research facilities. Wind tunnels, along with the other highly specialised facilities you need if you are a major player, don't fit QinetiQ's technology park image and certainly don't fit the management ethos of going for quick commercial returns and making a few people rich. Neither are there any effective safeguards to ensure QinetiQ's freedom to exploit any market niche it fancies is not at the expense of its histori cal commitment towards UK aero space and defence procurement. Last year, work began on turning half of the Tunnel Site estate in Bedford into a refugee centre which, it was said, would help sub sidise site overheads. However,the 4 x 3m (13 x 9ft) low speed tunnel, though it had work, conveniently fell on the wrong side of the divide and was soon sold off cheaply. Today, less than two years later, the 2.5m supersonic tunnel - wherein Concorde's high speed configura tion was validated - and the high supersonic 1 x 1.2m tunnel, are closing due to "lack of demand". So how does the Aircraft Research Assocation's transonic tunnel (inci dentally a complementary design to the 2.5m) a few miles down the road survive so well in this suppos edly barren climate? For "lack of demand" read "lack of demand at QinetiQ's rates". The other argu ment, that computational fluid dynamic (CFD) advances are mak ing tunnels redundant, is not con vincing. Even the most ardent pro tagonist would agree that tunnels and CFD will be complementary for a long time. Boeing's euphoric relief over the initial tunnel results for its Sonic Cruiser says a lot. 38 8-14 JANUARY 2002 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL www.flightinternational.com
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