Entertaining the Public
The opening of the air display season, now imminent, makes it appropriate to venture some comments based on experience of many such events in the past. Too many organizers, for instance, still fail to recognize the importance of arranging programme that it achieves variety by contrast. We once saw two very similar jet aerobatic items sandwiched together amid a series of demonstrations by small civil aircraft, with the result that the second of the two wholly lost its effectiveness. Music-hall managements, with their expertly selected succession of acrobats, singers, dancers and comedians, understand the importance of "running order," and of the build up towards the star turn at the end; this is an example that display organizers might well follow. Two contrasting items that would come in satisfactory succession would be a good, noisy low-altitude jet demonstration followed by the telling silence of sailplane aerobatics.
Over the Red Square
A massive multi-jet swept-wing bomber, approximately in size to the Boeing B-52, led the mass formation fly-past over Moscow's Red Square on May Day this year. The great machine was escorted by four single-jet fighters and was followed by three vics of new-type twin-jet bombers.
In all probability the fighters escorting the leading bomber were a new, single-jet, type, possibly having a greater span than the 33ft of the Mig-15. In any case, the bomber probably spans 170-180ft, while the twin-jet machines which brought up the rear must measure about 100ft.
American Airlines Maintenance Base
It is announced that American Airlines are to build an $8 million maintenance base at New York International Airport. This is the first phase of permanent development by this company at Idlewild, and construction is expected to be completed in the early summer of 1956. The base will consist of offices, a hangar accommodating 14 aircraft, and parking space for up to 1,500 cars. The initial project will occupy 43 acres of a 76-acre site leased from the Port of New York Authority for 22 years. The cost of the plant will be part of the $40 million which American will spend this year for aircraft, equipment and buildings.
Source: Flight International
