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Aviation History
1958
1958 - 0603.PDF
2 May 1958 619 First flight—and first air-to-air pictures—of the first Comet 4 were made last Sunday. The following day the aircraft was airborne again for nearly two hours and should be flying regularly from Hatfield for the next three months when overseas trials will begin. Thrust reversers on two of the Comet 3's Avon RA.29s were flown for the first time last Saturday, with demonstrably satisfactory results. For the record, the following aide-memoire should help toclarify the position of the new airline in relation to Aer Lingus. Both companies operate under the English title of Irish Air Lines;have common technical and commercial divisions; and share a general manager, deputy general manager and secretary; but theconstitution of their Boards is different. Aer Lingus are the general agents for Aerlinte in Ireland and—as already noted—operatethe Shannon - Dublin - Shannon sector, as sub-tenants of the L.1049Hs, as well as supplying cabin service to Aerlinte. Irish Department of Finance Her Majesty's Treasury Aer Rianta Teoranta --.-.- (Air Routes, Ltd.) 100% holding British European Airways Corporation 90% holding Aer Lingus Teoranta (Air Fleet, Ltd.) Aerlinte Eireann Teoranta (Irish Air Lines, Ltd.) RATIONALIZING THE CODES THE process of comparing the British A.R.B. and the American•*• C.A.A. airworthiness requirements "line by line" (as Mr. R. E. Hardingham, A.R.B. secretary, has described it) entered a new andperhaps final phase last week. A delegation from C.A.A. visited London for talks with the A.R.B., following that authority's visitto Washington last December. There can be few people in the air transport business who havenot at times been exasperated by the discrepancies between the two codes. As the Ministry of Transport said last week, "Theoverall objectives of both countries are identical. Differences in method . . . have grown up over the years. But the advent ofthe turbine-engined aeroplane with its new problems opens the way for a major effort to align the methods." At last there appears to be a good prospect of substantiallyreducing the differences, if not actually of eliminating them. Even if the last-named ideal compromise does not result, and theworld's two major manufacturing countries still differ in their air- worthiness codes, at least manufacturers and operators will knowexactly where they stand in relation to the requirements of the other. Chairman of the latest meeting was Mr. Walter Tye, the A.R.B.'stechnical officer, and the United States' team, 16 strong, was headed by Mr. W. E. Koneczny, chief of the airworthiness divisionof the C.A.B. Each team included representatives from manufac- turers, operators, government departments, and pilots. THE PENALTY OF OVERWORK FINES totalling £250 and costs were levied on Independent AirTravel and the company's pilots at Bournemouth last week for offences concerning flight-time limitations. All seven pilotscharged pleaded guilty to infringing the fifth amendment of the 1954 Air Navigation Order; they had all exceeded 125 hours' flyingin the previous 30 days and two pilots had to face additional summonses for having taken insufficient rest periods betweenflights. Independent have gained a good many sympathizers during thecase; the pilots were not flying additional hours to obtain a bonus (they are on a fixed salary-scale), no suggestion of lack of safety orcrew fatigue on any flight was involved, and the company are quite small and perhaps unfortunate to be the first to be charged with abreach of these regulations. Mr. H. E. Lewis McCreery, repre- senting Independent, said that aircrews were extremely hard tofind and "my company and other companies are driven to the expedient of having people who fly for them only at week-endsand on one day a week." It was admitted by Mr. F. E. Beezley, for the Director of PublicProsecutions, that the current flight-time regulations were "experi- mental in nature" and that Independent's accident record couldfairly be described as "extremely good." Nevertheless, there could be no objection to a penalty against the carrier once a breach ofregulations had been admitted; the limitations have been framed to safeguard pilots against exploitation as well as to protectpassengers and crews from the effects of cockpit fatigue. LONG-HAUL ECONOMICS SWISSAIR'S experience in 1957 was discussed in Flight forApril 4, as evidence of the immediate financial improvement invariably resulting from an increase in the average length of haul.The latest accounts for East African Airways provide yet more proof of this relationship.For a number of years E.A.A.C. has been struggling to escape from the red. Operations have been based on DC-3 servicesrunning from Nairobi down to the coast at Mombasa and on to Dar-es-Salaam, but profits on this route have always been swal-lowed up by the losses involved in maintaining less densely travelled routes. A few years ago the company embarked on along-distance service to Durban via Rhodesia, but although this venture showed modest profits, limitation of frequency and fiercecompetition from trunk airlines prevented this from significantly affecting the Corporation's results. Last year saw E.A.A.C. start services between East Africa andthe U.K. using three Argonauts purchased at reasonable terms from B.O.A.C. (A fourth aircraft has recently been added to thefleet.) The effect of this has been startling. After payment of interest on capital, the Corporation has made a clear profit of£5,000. Internal traffic has remained static, but international traffic has more than doubled, average passenger haul havingincreased from 270 to 340 miles. A fall in average costs per c.t.m. from 47d to 43d has been accompanied by cheering improvementsin productivity, output having increased from 350 to 475 c.t.m. per flying hour and from 6,000 to 7,000 c.t.m. per employee. Intwo other ways the situation has been improved by advent of the Argonauts. Additional capacity has permitted E.A.A.C. to delayreplacement of their DC-3s. Probably more important is the access 4s this series of photographs indicates, Boeing are taking no chances with the doors of the 707. The test programme planned by Boeing will see their newly designed outward-opening plug-type door being opened and closed at least 25,000 times before the aircraft goes into service later this year.
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