The Navigational Aspect of Flight Refuelling

Extract

British south american airways have recently been carrying out a series of tests on flight refuelling. The first of these tests took place over southern England and were carried out on a scheduled basis at various heights both by day and by night and all proved successful—with the exception of two which were cancelled on account of bad weather, that is, bad weather on the ground and not in the air. The second part of the series has now taken place and consisted of London-Bermuda-London return nights on a weekly basis for a period of three months.

The process of flight refuelling does not in fact involve any particular navigational problem, but rather the simple problem of ‘approach’. The aircraft admittedly must intercept, but thanks to the fact that various devices are used for the actual approach of one aircraft to the other the navigational accuracy required for the interception is not at the moment of a very high order.