Corporations Surplus Although as we go to press no detailed figures have been announced, it is known that both B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. have ended their financial years with a small surplus. It had been expected that B.O.A.C. would make a considerable loss, and that B.E.A. also might be hard put to make a profit. An unexpectedly big increase in traffic revenue - 13½ per cent - appears to have contributed to B.O.A.C.'s result, together with an increase in capacity of eight per cent. As in the past, provisional details should be released within the next few weeks, pending publication of the full reports and accounts later in the summer. Powerful Avon It has been announced that the Rolls-Royce Avon R.A.24 has been type-tested at a (non-afterburning) rating of 11,250 lb. This is a truly remarkable figure for a unit of such modest compass, and it approaches twice the thrust of the 6,000 lb R.A.2. No details of the application of the R.A.24 may be published , but it seems fair to assume that it is a military powerplant probably used in several of our most important aircraft. Computation piece A report from the U.S.A. says that what is described as a "computer readout and intervention system," making possible the introduction of human logic midway in a problem's computation by an "electronic brain," is to be produced for the U.S.A.F. It will be the first application of a concept developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology "to facilitate the transmission of general ideas, as in a conversation, between a human and a computer." Ceylon Bases Transfer In Colombo last week the Prime Minister of Ceylon, Mr. S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, said that the British air and Naval bases in Ceylon (at Katunayake and Trincomalee) would be formally handed over to the Ceylonese Government next November. Sea Slug At a Mansion House dinner last week the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke, referred to a British surface-to-air guided missile, the Sea Slug, about which he said the U.S. Navy had "heard encouraging reports". This weapon has not so far been named here and the Admiralty and Ministry of Supply have not yet officially confirmed its existence. |
Source: Flight International