Before we begin, let me say that this paper is not a catalogue of engines, their bores and strokes, their output and weight. These aspects have been well covered before and are well recorded.

However, engines will figure prominently because that was the business of de Havilland Engines and our fortunes or misfortunes followed their pattern. However, instead of rigorously following the historic trail I prefer to pick out some of the landmarks and to outline some of the problems we met on the way. There may be a few anecdotes and something about the people who took part.

To begin at the beginning, we must start with Geoffrey de Havilland, who wanted to fly.

Tosurvive,every employee inBritishAerospace must recover or earn in the market place, each and every year:

(These figures are the approximate actual figures for every employee in the British Aerospace Corporation in the year 1977.)

The industrialised nations of the free world are generally committed to the preservation of the right of self-determination for the developing nations, the principle of free trade, and the maintenance of peace. In addition, the source of much of the world's raw materials exists within the national boundaries of the developing nations. As these nations seek independence, both economic and political, it is anticipated that many confrontations will occur, some of which will be military, aided and abetted by the Soviet Union and communist-aligned countries. In enlightened self-interest, it is expected that more and more of the free world industrialised nations will participate in assisting these non-aligned nations in the self-determination process by providing supplies or military equipment in a timely fashion as required. If these are reasonable assumptions, it follows that, during the eighties, there will be a need by many nations for airlift capability for which there is no precedent. Today’s airlift systems are not optimised for these conditions.

On the 15th May 1941 a small aircraft landed at Cranwell after a flight lasting 17 minutes. The pilot, Fl. Lt. P. E. G. Sayer, got out of the aircraft and was immediately surrounded by an excited group wanting to know how the machine had performed. He answered questions standing by the aircraft and reading from the notes on his knee pad, which he copied on to the paper as shown in Fig. 1. This flight, the first of a Whittle turbojet propelled aircraft, started a new era in aviation. It also marked the beginning of the rapid development of a new heat engine, the fifth since Newcomen’s steam engine.

As you can see from the pilot’s notes, the performance of the E28/39 aircraft in that first flight was modest. An Indicated Air Speed (IAS) of 240 mph was reached. That it was powered by a turbojet can be seen from the readings of rpm, jet pipe temperature, etc. This first engine developed about 850 lb take-off thrust and weighed some 700 lb.

A symposium having AIDS as its topic must include descriptions of flight and ground hardware, software programmes, and logistic support. These are dealt with only incidentally in this paper which attempts to examine the role of AIDS in the total management programme of a major aircraft system—the propulsion system. It can be accepted without too much contention that AIDS equipment can now be adequately reliable and provide flight acquired data in virtually any desired form. It is the inventiveness and imagination of prime manufacturers and operators which is being challenged to make the best use of it. The carriage in flight of equipment which does not directly contribute to performance or payload, and can require anything up to its own weight in compensatory fuel, obviously needs careful examination; but knowledge and understanding of the propulsion system characteristics can be priceless in guiding a transport system or weapon system efficiently through its life cycle.

The Short brothers were pioneers in the true sense of the word. They were inspired by the vision of flight and had the driving force while still in their early twenties to build and fly their own balloons (Refs. 1, 2). Through their practical skill and thoroughness they were soon making balloons for other enthusiasts, including the Hon. C. S. Rolls, a co-founder of my Company. Horace Short, the Hon. C. S. Rolls and Griffith Brewer are seen with the Wright brothers in the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost in 1908 (Fig. 1).

For centuries man had dreamed of flying. Kites, gliders, balloons and ornithopters were built but none achieved sustained controlled flight until the brilliant practical experimental work of the Wright brothers brought success in 1903. Some gloomy predictions of eminent academics were thus confounded.

Since the White Paper appeared three weeks ago, there has been both the opportunity for an initial reaction to emerge and sufficient time for a more mature consideration of the policy conclusions and their implications. The symposium today provides the first occasion open to the Government to explain the policy to a wider audience—outside the House of Commons and the meetings which I have been holding up and down the country at particular airports—to comment on the principal views which have been expressed so far; and to receive a reaction to the White Paper and its recommendations from influential opinion within the airlines, airport authorities, local authorities, amenity organisations and airport users.

It is not my intention to comment on the detailed conclusions of the White Paper, which Neville Ledsome will be covering shortly. But I would like to refer briefly to the Government's overall approach; to the immediate reaction to the White Paper; and to the next steps in the development of airports policy, for which the White Paper marks a beginning rather than an end.

In considering the necessity for requirements to establish the airworthiness of helicopters it is essential to take into account the capabilities of the vehicle itself, the environment in which the vehicle is likely to be used and the abilities of the people most likely to be involved with the vehicle.

As envisaged by the inventors the helicopter is a vehicle which is capable of both vertical and translational flight. Unfortunately if the helicopter enters a cloud whilst engaged in vertical flight all visual reference is lost and the pilot is unable to correct any disturbance due to gustiness in the surrounding air. Conversely, if descending in vertical flight a situation can arise where the rotor develops a vortex ring and without forward speed the descent rate cannot be reduced until the helicopter hits the ground. It is therefore apparent that in flying the helicopter the pilot has to know its limitations and must be trained to handle the aircraft properly. Again in the course of flying the helicopter there is a probability that something will fail and if that probability is too high then such failures must be taken into account in assessing the airworthiness.

For several years before 1976 the United Kingdom had been increasingly dissatisfied with the working of the old Bermuda Agreement. That Treaty had been a landmark in its day and its authors can be—and must be —proud that it stood the test of time so long. It had a profound influence on the development of post-war civil aviation and was the guiding light for numerous bilateral Air Services Agreements the world over.

But by the early 1970s its wording—possibly intentionally imprecise in a number of places—had become increasingly out of date and the subject of contentious argument. The Tariffs Article in particular gave continuing cause for trouble and the UK had become disenchanted with the working of the capacity provisions and dissatisfied in particular with the general balance of the Agreement. US airlines earned in the year ending 31st March 1976 nearly £300m from the Agreement whereas the earnings of British airlines was only some £130m. Of this latter figure, £127m was earned on the North Atlantic where US airlines earned upwards of £180m. It was self-evident that the American airlines would always outfly and out-earn us across the Pacific on routes to and through Hong Kong, and on routes between the mainland of the USA and Bermuda as well as to British points in the Caribbean. But it was not so self-evident that American airlines should continue to have a wide range of valuable fifth freedom rights at London and Hong Kong when British airlines could make no practical use of the relatively few fifth freedom opportunities which they had from points in the United States onwards across the Pacific and into the Caribbean.

As you could all imagine I am sure, the title of this lecture embraces a subject which is very close to the airline operator's heart. One of the prime objectives of any airline is to operate on time all the time.

The word ‘delay’ of course can encompass a wide range of problems. As the second oldest airline in the world—after KLM—and the operator of the world's longest average passenger journey length we do not mind admitting that we have had our share of delays over the years. I know this is a very serious subject but I could not resist having a brief look through our records recently to pluck out a few of the more extreme reasons for delays that you run into in the airline business.

The data in this paper are derived from the European Intercity Transport Study carried out between 1973 and 1976 jointly by the OECD, the ECMT and the EEC, with the direct participation of 12 European governments. The Study report was completed in the second half of 1976 and, though not yet published, has been circulated fairly widely.

The subject of this paper touches on just one aspect of the European Study, namely the competition between air transport and other means of transport for passenger traffic in Europe. Since the interest of the paper lies in air traffic it is only concerned with long-distance travel. The European Study limited its attention to trips of over 80 km, straight line distance, which clearly includes all air trips.

The principal modes of transport which compete with air for passenger trips within Europe are car, train and bus. Other modes account for less than 2% of long-distance trips, and they appear to be about equally divided between goods vehicles and motorcycles, but these modes will be ignored in this paper. Ferries are also used, of course, for sea crossings but they are treated for analytical purposes as links in the road and rail networks.

Presentation of the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim International Memorial Lecture is both a high honour and a challenge. The challenge is implicit in the final two words—to present to you both a lecture and a fitting memorial to the remarkable Guggenheim family. I believe that the subject which I have chosen is particularly appropriate for this task. As many of you know, Daniel Guggenheim, in the years from 1925 to his death in 1930, sponsored and endowed the now famous Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratories in major universities across the USA. It is clear from his writing that these were not simply gifts to the universities—conventional endowments—but that they reflected Daniel Guggenheim's vision of a future in which the aircraft would link cities and countries in a safe, efficient civil transport system surpassing all other modes of travel.

Before getting to the heart of the matter as it were, it would seem to be sensible to sketch in some of the background to the whole project.

One of the teaching methods used at Cranfield relating to aircraft design students, is to enforce on them the discipline of a design project study undertaken within a group, to be completed within a given timescale and within defined specifications. Many an interesting paper aeroplane has evolved which, for obvious reasons, never progresses beyond model stage.

About a decade ago Nick Carter, the then manager of the British Aerobatic Team and Peter Little an ex-student of the College of Aeronautics asked Cranfield if they would consider the use of student effort to design an aerobatic aircraft for competitive work. On investigation it was discovered that such a task was sufficiently demanding to prove a challenge.

Helicopter flight simulators have now been in use in the Royal Navy for fifteen years. The aim of this paper is to discuss the development of the helicopter within naval aviation, and in turn the development of the helicopter simulator alongside its actual aircraft counterpart. The uses to which the Royal Navy puts its simulators will be detailed, with particular reference to its most used simulator, the Sea King Flight and Mission Simulator. The expanding use of helicopters will be discussed, with a look at the Royal Navy’s present day aircraft, the Lynx, and its simulator. The assured future for flight simulation within the Fleet Air Arm will be explained.

Helicopters have been used by the Royal Navy since 1944, when four R4s were purchased from Sikorsky’s, and the change over of the Fleet Air Arm from an all fixed wing force to an almost totally helicopter force can be seen to be due to both operational considerations and political events.

The White Paper has five main objectives. First, to establish a framework against which over an extended period airport developments throughout Great Britain should be considered; secondly, to assess the future demand for air transport and thus for airport capacity; thirdly, to explain how demand might be met during the period to 1990; fourthly, to examine the noise and other environmental effects of airport developments; and finally, to outline the airport options to be considered for the longer term.

I need not, for this audience, outline the history of airport development in Great Britain over the past 30 years. The approach to the South East problem which was characterised by efforts to find the grand solution; the failure to consider the requirements of the South East within a wider national context; and the absence of any proper guidance for the development of airports outside the South East with the consequent over provision of facilities in the regions which we face today.

When my colleague, John Carrodus, told me that he was leaving CAA to join Cathay Pacific, he asked me to give the Test Pilot’s Group Lecture in his place. Knowing his inimitable style and ability to regale an audience without pulled punches, I was set a hard task. My work involves little aeroplanes. They are not exotic, like big jets. All of them weigh 6000 lb or less. But I happen to think that I have the best flying job in the country. Much of the piquancy comes from dealing with individuals who are attempting to make a living, and who are sometimes forced to try to cheat the system in order to survive in the face of pressures from the law, paperwork, insurance, more paperwork, inflation and taxation, and still more paperwork; not to mention the emetic CAA.

Progress in aviation has had and is expected to continue to have a profound impact on business. Transportation has been revolutionised by aircraft in the 20th century. Technology advances and pioneering management have led to the development of an air transportation industry which has spanned the globe, all but eliminated competition from passenger steamships, and reduced the dimensions of the globe to such an extent that most of the major cities of the world are now no more than 24 hours apart. Progress has taken many forms. The time required for a transatlantic journey has been reduced by 94% from the passenger steamship to the subsonic jet transport. Concorde operations have even further reduced this time. As the air transportation industry developed, technology advances permitted it to offer other dramatic improvements such as increased comfort, service, reliability, safety, and at the same time lower fares. Thus, increased economic productivity allowed passenger fares (measured in currency of constant purchasing power) over the North Atlantic to be reduced by two-thirds between 1939 and 1976.

I shall aim at explaining, from an operator's point of I view, what was so wrong with the Bermuda Agreement that the UK Government denounced it, to what extent Bermuda 2 has corrected that position and, in addition, put forward a few thoughts on possible charter arrangements within Bermuda 2.

For over 30 years, the Bermuda Agreement of 1946 set the framework for UK/US civil aviation affairs—and served for perhaps 15 to 20 years in form and in reality as the prototype for most civil aviation agreements in the free world.

By the late 1960s, however, there were few bilateral air agreements involving countries other than the USA which did not in some way control capacity. Despite the almost invariable Bermuda façade, the effect of attaching confidential understandings between governments to the published Bermuda text was to control capacity in one way or another.

In terms of world scheduled passenger traffic, Europe accounts for:

• (a) 35% of passenger journeys;

• (b) 10% of passenger kilometres;

• (c) 40% of aircraft movements.

This traffic has shown sustained growth at about twice the rate of general economic expansion.

Rapid growth of trade and discretionary income explains a substantial proportion of this growth, but the efforts of the airline industry itself, which have resulted in improvements in speed and comfort and a persistent fall in real fares, are equally important.

Since the early 1960s the air travel market has broadened considerably. The scheduled industry no longer caters solely for business and wealthy leisure travellers. Increasingly, in a consumerist world, it caters for travellers with modest incomes. Consumerism is not the only external force to be reckoned with. The environmental lobby is strong and demands attention.