Although the subject under discussion refers directly to international airports, I feel I must point out at the outset that domestic airports are similarly influenced by the same aircraft development—usually, however, a little later, as anything which can be labelled biggest, best, fastest or any other commercially acceptable superlative is usually introduced into the international arena first.

As those of you who had the opportunity to read my summary will have noted, I believe that airport planning, certainly for the next ten years, will be mainly influenced by the loads carried in the new generations of commercial aircraft rather than by the aircraft themselves. To illustrate my point, I will first review the significant developments in this field during the past and then, I hope, refer in greater detail to the major factors which we have to face both today and in the immediate future.

Since the end of the Second World War civil aviation has grown beyond the dreams of the early pioneers and the design, development, manufacture and after sales support of a civil aircraft has become a most complex undertaking, involving a wide range of engineering knowledge and many engineering skills. In the past the approval of an aircraft constructor by the British Civil Airworthiness Authority has rested with the Chief Designer and the Chief Inspector of the company, but as the complexity and the cost of development, production and maintenance of modern civil aircraft has grown, it has become increasingly clear that the responsibility for control of airworthiness lies throughout the whole company.

This half-day symposium was held at the Society on 4th November 1970. The proceedings were opened by the President, Air Commodore J. R. Morgan, OBE, FRAeS, who welcomed distinguished visitors from overseas and introduced the Chairman of the Symposium: Sir Eustace Roskill, a judge of the Queen's Bench Division and chairman of the commission to enquire into the siting of London's Third Airport.

Mr. A. W. G. Kean, principal Assistant Solicitor in the Department of Trade and Industry, was the first speaker; he outlined the background to current proposals for revision to the Warsaw Convention to be considered at a Diplomatic Conference in February 1971 in Guatemala.

Subsequent proceedings were divided into two main parts: Part I—in which European viewpoints were expressed; Part II—consisting of a selection of American viewpoints.

An important written contribution to the proceedings is a copy of official statistics gathered by the Civil Aeronautics Board for the purposes of the Diplomatic Conference and released to the Society by the US State Department which will be published, together with the Part II discussion, and the written contributions, in the March issue of the Journal.

As in most things, progress in aviation has proceeded in distinct steps. A technical breakthrough resulting in a significant performance increment would be immediately adopted by all designers in the international competition for orders and recognition. One might recall the cantilever wing, the retractable landing gear, the jet engine, the swept wing, the delta wing and the supersonic wing. Performance and economics counted and if there were a few new handling or operational problems introduced— well, they would be attended to in good time. Reduced margins of stability were often accepted by test pilots; partly in their employer's interest, and partly because there is no easy answer to “what's good enough?” Handling qualities did have a substantial impact on economics, of course, but cause and effect were not yet clearly related.

Over the past twenty years a large part of the activity of Turbomeca has been directed first to the creation and next to the subsequent development of propulsion units for helicopters.

The use of the gas turbine brought with it a fundamental advantage—low specific weight which led to the exceptional expansion of this specialised branch of the aircraft industry, and without wishing to minimise the constant improvement of rotor systems, we believe that above all else the qualities of the engine have played a significant part in the success of this system of transport and in the more specific success of this or that particular helicopter.

I am greatly honoured to be here and to follow the distinguished men who have given this lecture in honour of the Wright Brothers in previous years. All of my famous predecessors have spoken on the subject of aeronautics. I will deal with aeronautics but only to describe its role in the development of manned space flight.

In their development of the aeroplane, the Wright Brothers recognised that there were many factors that they needed to master for successful flight. For example, they foresaw the need to train themselves to fly, showing truly remarkable foresight. They built and used their own wind tunnel. They combined the rare ability to recognise problems and to devise methods for their solution, all within the modest resources of their time. I have been very fortunate to live at a time where I could participate in so many phases of manned flight. As a boy, the Wright Brothers were a legend in my home. Later I was privileged to know Orville Wright when I was a young engineer at Langley Field and he was a member of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).

Considerable interest is currently evident in the potentialities of large airships as a means of transporting freight; studies are proceeding at various levels in a number of countries, the two most serious projects in the UK being those under respective development by Cargo Airships Limited and by Airfloat Transport Limited.

Although most proposals concur in envisaging a very large helium-filled vessel cruising at 80 to 110 kt (148-185 km/h) and carrying payloads of up to 500 tons (508 000 kg) there is significant diversity of approach in the selection of fields of application for the airship, and in the establishment of the appropriate design parameters.

This paper, therefore, seeks to indicate some areas of the overall transport spectrum which might be expected to favour airship operation, and discusses some of the problems associated with different modes of operation.

Particular reference will be made to the Airfloat Transport project, which is a vessel with a gas capacity of 30 million ft3 (849 510 m3) intended for the carriage of large indivisible loads over moderate distances.

On reflection, the development of the Royal Australian Air Force over the past 50 years may be considered to have taken place in three phases—the creation and slow growth of an air force as a distinct entity in the 1920s and 1930s, fostered in part by a series of daring transoceanic flights by both military and civilian aviators; the great expansion of the force during the Second World War which, in half a decade, transformed the RAAF from the biplane era to the jet age; and, finally, the restructuring and development of the force in the so-called post-war era but one, in fact, in which the RAAF has been required to participate in such military operations as confrontation with Indonesia, the anti-terrorist campaign in Malaya, limited war in Korea and the current pacification of South Vietnam.

In a paper published in 1956 the senior author analysed the problem of the creep bending and buckling of a reinforced circular cylindrical shell subjected to the action of a bending moment constant in time and along the axis of the shell. With the aid of the principle of virtual displacements he found that the problem is governed by two simultaneous non-linear first-order differential equations. The equations were integrated step by step with the aid of a desk calculator and satisfactory agreement was found between theory and experiment when the results were compared with experimental data obtained in the laboratory of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. The experimental investigation and its results were described in ref. 1 as well as in a research memorandum of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the theory was presented in detail at the Symposium on Structural Problems of High-Speed Flight held at Cranfield, England, in August 1956 and published in the Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1957.

We have come to honour the memory of a great Australian. Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith was one of that small band of pioneers who forced us to start down the road which we all tread with so much confidence today. So, in our discussion I ask you to remember the men who started it all by flying unsophisticated and not too reliable aeroplanes over oceans and deserts, and who frequently lost their lives in the attempt.

I imagine that almost any speaker here would refer to aviation's humble beginnings, its phenomenal growth over the years since the war, and the brilliant and seemingly limitless future which lies ahead, and the figures certainly are impressive.

A Euromech meeting on the aerodynamics of lifting bodies at high supersonic speeds was held at Churchill College, Cambridge on 30th and 31st July. Forty people attended from various European countries and 21 papers were presented. It is believed that these papers are fairly indicative of the range of current European work in this field. The present note gives a brief account of the work discussed at the meeting. A fuller report on the meeting is being prepared and will be circulated to all interested parties (copies may be obtained from the present author).

This symposium is about Airports and Transport Aircraft and Interface problems. The best way to deal with interface problems is not to have them.

My paper is about some of the interface problems which may arise concerning a Third London Airport if we do not plan them away beforehand. The majority of the points I shall be raising were identified during our work for the Commission on the Third London Airport and are fully set out in the Report on the Commission's Proceedings Papers and Proceedings Volume VIII Part 2, Section 2, to which you should turn for more detail.

Frederick Handley Page was, in every sense, a well-rounded man. His interests were wide—from ancient history to science fiction. They ranged through all branches of aeronautics into astronautics. And he was not afraid to show enthusiasm, tempered with a certain—proper—cynical optimism.

In the 25 years during which I knew him (from 1937 to his death, at the age of 77, in 1962) I found increasingly that one of the endearing characteristics of HP was that he maintained an exceptionally close and imaginative interest in the four main aspects of aviation in which he had been involved from his pioneering days:

• Aircraft manufacture

• Aircraft operation

• Aerodrome provisions, and

• Air education

All of these subjects are just as relevant today.

An important growth of air traffic is recorded, as compared with other forms of traffic. Fig. 1 is an example of the domestic-intercity passenger travel market in the USA and is characteristic; showing (millions of passenger miles)

stagnation for waterways;
stagnation for autocars—buses;
decreasing for railroads;
expansion for airlines: annual growth rate of 10% over the past fifteen years, and acceleration since 1962: mean annual growth rate 18%.
It is also important to mention the expansion in freight, which is about 20% a year, i.e. doubled every four years.

In December 1968, the Boeing Company defined a two-phase programme having the objective of demonstrating for the US Army those characteristics which experience with operation of the CH-47 Chinook had indicated would be required in the next generation of US Army transport helicopters. The programme, which was named the Model 347 Programme, would encompass simulation, wind tunnel, whirl tower, and bench testing and culminate with flight test development and demonstration of a modified CH-47A airframe. The first phase of the programme was aimed at establishing new standards for the flying qualities (handling, vibration and noise) of transport helicopters in a conventional pure helicopter arrangement. The second phase was to allow assessment of the value of providing a high manoeuvre capability for a transport helicopter as could be provided through the use of a fixed wing.

I am to argue in favour of strict liability as against the carrier and to oppose the limitation of damages, arguments which I advance with some satisfaction since I happen also to believe them.

Strict liability is a doctrine more usually associated with the law of tort than the law of contract but as an injury resulting from an air crash is both contractual and tortious (and it even seems at one time to have been decided in America that the Warsaw Convention had itself created a cause of action), even if it be inelegant from a lawyer's point of view, I shall make no distinction between them. There are enough distinctions to be made on this topic without insisting on the lawyer's habit of mind.