In view of the increasing awareness of the population to noise pollution, reduction of aircraft noise annoyance to an acceptable level becomes one of the necessary conditions for the acceptability of aircraft operations close to populated areas. In particular, reducing the subjective acoustical annoyance of VTOL aircraft to the surrounding community should become the common objective of aircraft manufacturers, airport planners, potential aircraft operators and the community itself if the latter is to benefit from all the possible advantages of VTOL service.

This paper outlines the aircraft designer's role and problems in airliner flight deck design. The impact of this has a significant effect on the final result, notwithstanding the desires and academic assumptions which are constantly being applied as being the “right” way to carry out this immensely difficult task of trying to please everybody, yet with the restraints of a defined operational role and an economic timescale.

It must be remembered that the “ideal” aircraft would never get off the ground and the over complex aircraft would have a good attempt at staying there.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the growing subject of inlet/engine compatibility a discussion of some of the more interesting results of research and development testing of rig compressors and engines carried out at the Bristol Engine Division of Rolls-Royce (1971) Ltd, and to discuss these against a now extensive background literature.

The effects of an inlet system on an axial flow gas turbine are principally on performance, stability and mechanical integrity. In this paper attention is focused on the effects of total pressure distortion on the compressor system's performance and stability.

Agricultural and forestry aviation is a service industry to the food and fibre production industries, and to public health hazard control systems. The wide range of conditions which obtain in Canada is such that a review of the state of the art and of priority problems will also serve to illustrate the current situation in many other areas of the world.

In the 18th Mitchell Memorial Lecture given to the Southampton Branch of the Society on 3rd February 1971, Val Cleaver discussed the outlook for astronautics after Apollo.

In the light of participation in the rapidly evolving programme since that date, I shall discuss, in this lecture, the history of the Apollo project, its relation to the evolving objectives of the NASA space programme as a whole, the origins of ideas which led to the post Apollo system, the history of negotiations between the Americans and Europe on European participation in the programme, the current studies, and factors underlying possible European involvement.

The first American satellite weighed 30 lb and was launched in 1958. Since then the Americans have launched several million pounds of payload into low earth orbit and, in the Apollo programme, individual payloads into low earth orbit have a weight of 300 000 lb. NASA astronauts have spent more than 6000 hrs in space, safely flying more than 100 million miles. Eighteen American astronauts have orbited the moon, eight have left their footprints on the lunar surface.

Air transport is a part of the overall transportation system and has no special mission of its own other than to serve the community by performing those functions for which it is best suited, technically and economically.

The impact of transportation on the development of world societies can hardly be overestimated. Before the advent of the steam engine, the horse on land and the sail at sea were the available tractive forces. Speed and capacity were low and transportation costs were high. Only high value goods could be hauled over extended distances. While ocean transport was often the prerogative of a national flag (remember the Navigation Laws under William Pitt—perhaps the forerunner of today's air traffic rights), local hauling activities were either performed by the users themselves or, if exercised as a trade, subject to the usual regulation of medieval guilds.