TRANS-OCEAN AIR TRAVEL

Taupo Times, Volume I, Issue 42, 29 October 1952, Page 7

TRANS-OCEAN AIR TRAVEL

REMARKABLE DEVELOPMENT A remarkable safety record over 12 years of operating on North Atlantic air routes is due chiefly to the degree of co-operation that has developed between the Atlantic community nations and also between the airlines which fly over the North Atlantic regularly nowadaysi At any given moment im the (peak season, about 40 great airplanes of 10 nations will be crossing the North Atlantic ocean with a total of 2,000 to 3,000 passengers. Last year, jOrly Field in Paris handled on an average summer day more transatlantic passengers than the great French port of Le Havre. During 1951, 370,000 persons flew the Atlantic Ocean and the number is expected to be much higher this year.

The Met Report. The |first and greatest requirement of the transoceanie flier is weather information, in a wealth of detail that no private enterprise can alford. Weather information, is, therefore gathered in a pool into which the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Spain, Germany and half a dozen smaller countries now pour wireless coded meteoroiogical observations around the clock. This information can be obtained at any of a hundred air centres byt any of 11 non-military air carrie who fly the North Atlantic ocean regularly and by non-scheduled planes of any nationality. Safety Net.

Even more elaborate than the weather net is the safety net. All air space across the North Atlantic is divided into traffic blocks by two interlocking systems, just as a railway divides tts trackage into such blocks. One syst~m ->f tiaffic control is mahned by the government authorities of each country along the route, while the other system is maintained by the flightdispatch office of each air line. Both systems trace every plane aloft, passing responsibility for it by radio from traffic block to traffic block. Over the ocean, a pilot's .communication is meticulously checked every half hour and his position is checked every hour from the minute the last shore station reports the plane has passed the coast. A pilot is allowed one miss on such a radio check, for the strange effects of Northern lights or radio C storm s may foul his signal. After that one-hour interval, however, a dozen or so radios from the Azores to Greenland are focussed on 11 im trying to pick up and relay his signal to traffic-control centre. I£ weather conditions are smooth in the pilot's last reported area, he is allowed another hour to report after the first miss. If two hours go by, however, and the plane is still silent, the mechanism of AirSea Rescue is called into emergency serv^ce. Air-Sea Rescue.

Air-Sea Rescue is another of the j great community elforts of the past five years. Five nations of t'he North Atlantic maintain constant stand-by patrol planes, staffed with tradned rescue and survival teams ready to take the air on emergency call. Not one of the great passenger planes of the scheduled air carriers of the North Atlantic has been lost in the ocean since the war, but pilots are ordered to call AirSea Rescue at the first suspicion of trouble.