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Aviation History
1965
1965 - 0120.PDF
78 RIGHT International, 14 January (965 (T) Straight and Level TEN years ago the world's airlinesstarted ordering bigjets. Boeing had a707 actually flying; the Douglas DC-8 was only paperware, not due to fly for three years. Yet many airlines chose Douglas, even though it meant getting delivery a year or more later. Ten years later the blind faith is reversed. Boeing have a brochure with 737 in stylish letters on the cover. Douglas have a DC-9, in the form of hardware, due to fly in a month's time. Yet many airlines are choosing to wait and see how the 737 turns out. • An engine firm I know asked an air- line to rivet its trade-name plaques on to the engine nacelles. The idea was that all the passengers would spend five or six hours at a stretch looking out of the window at the nameplates. A splendid idea, said the airline. Shall we say £500 per engine? The engine company was a little taken aback. After all, was it not a privilege to have its name on view? Anyway, the offer was accepted. When you work it out on a captive-reader- impact basis, or whatever the advertise- ment industry calls it, £500 per engine over the ten-year life of the aircraft is pretty good value. And good revenue for the airline. I am trying to arrange for this week's Problem: How do Hawker Siddeley Dynamics stop birds fouling-up their work in a hangar at Whitleyl Answer: Plywood owls, of course Just how low can you geti—No 10 A still from the forthcoming 20th Century Fox film "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines." Replicas of tht Demoiselle and the Eardley Billing biplane, and some actors who weren't acting Straight and Level to be displayed on the inboard side of BOAC's VC10 wing fences. It's just a question of how much the corporation is prepared to pay for the privilege. • The other night I dreamt I was walking along a critical path through Target Forest. With me was a young man, who kept asking pert questions about the Belfast and C-141, Super VC10 and 707-320B, Trident IE and 727, TSR.2 and TFX, and one or two other pairs of rivals. Every now and then we passed a man with an axe. At length we came to a clearing. Behold, there were a dozen One-Elevens, a group of Kestrels, some RB.162s, a Pegasus, an HS.125, a Skyvan, a number of other items of equipment, and the sun was shining on them. • It must have been in 1958 that de Havilland"s sales people first suggested to their management that the Dove should have a swept fin and American engines. Hindsight and the Riley Dove 400 done by Jack Riley—an American—have shown that the de Havilland salesmen were right. You can't really expect to do much better than sell 550 of a basically unchanged air- craft over 20 years; but a re-styled Dove with the US engines could have added perhaps another 200 to the DH Chester production score over the past five years. It is speculation. But if I were a designer I would listen to those salesmen next time. One of them was Jack Riley, de Havilland's Dove distributor in the USA for many years. • To get what you want you must always have something to give away. Some of the new Ministry officials responsible for British traffic rights do not seem to appreci- ate this elementary bargaining ploy. And I would say from my experience that the private airlines are better at it than the State corporations. Why, somebody asked, was a certain British airline proposing to schedule at the same times as its foreign rival, and with a more attractive aircraft? Was this not asking for trouble ? Yes, it was indeed. It caused a lot of trouble. In the end the airline climbed down—in return for the traffic rights it wanted, of course—and switched its schedules to different days. Which were the days it wanted in the first place anyway. • Letter from a reader:— "Dear Sir,—Would you like an article about the general manager of a British aircraft firm who in his spare time is a wrestler known as Hassan AH Bey, The Terrible Turk with the Truculent Sneer? Yours faithfully etc." Naturally I wrote back and said yes, of course. The Terrible Turk turns out to be Mr Dennis Dawson, 42, general manager of Didsbury Engineering Ltd, Manchester. ROGER BACON
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