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Aviation Conspiracy Newsletter #77...............................August 20, 2000 Past newsletters can be accessed at: http://pages.prodigy.net/rockaway/ACNewsmenu.htm ====================================================================================

British Can The Concorde

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British Government Stops Its Concorde Flights: Many believe this is the end for the "Devil Bird" as it will cost too much to fix the MANY serious problems that the Concorde has. The ending of flights of the Concorde will have little effect on airport communities, even the ones who were unfortunate enough to have it fly over them. However, its demise is great victory for people who are for restoring "natural quiet." The Concorde has been the focal point of noise activists since the first takeoff blasted the ears of residents living near airports. In the nineteen seventies the opposition was so intense that the U.S. government was forced to ban it flying at supersonic speed over the continental United States! Read story on it below and at: http://www.canoe.ca/WorldTicker/CANOE-wire.Concordes-Fate.html

Editorial- As Bill Sees It: Death Of The Devil Bird!!! Having lived for years under the flight path of the Concorde near JFK Airport, I found it hard to believe that it was once planned to have a FLEET of these things flying over people's homes!!! This one plane did more to galvanize the public into protesting aviation pollution than anything the aviation cabal has done since. In 1975, people actually blocked traffic to the airport with their cars and got arrested protesting the plan to allow the fleet of these monsters to operate! It has taken twenty-five years, but it looks (hopefully) as if finally the last chapter of the most polluting of jetliners is finished. What will now happen with the European Union and the hushkit issue now that the Clinton/Gore Administration no longer has the Concorde flights to blackmail the EU into accepting noisy hushkitted, U.S. planes at their airports.

Airsafe.com: Fatality Statistics On Aircraft And Airlines: This is a interesting web site that may show why the Concorde was terminated. It shows the fatality rate of types of aircraft based on millions of flights. With the one Concorde crash, statistically, the Concorde became the most dangerous plane to fly! This was because the statistics are based on the fatality rate per million flights a plane model makes. Since there were only a few Concordes, the one crash made the Concorde almost three times as dangerous as the next plane model. You can also access the history of each crash. See below or go to web site: http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

New York Activist Fights GE's Stewart Airport Plan: Sandra Kissam, president of Stewart Park and Reserve Coalition, http://www.frontiernet.net/~sparc/ is protesting the "segmented environmental review" of the expansion of this small local airport into a giant air cargo hub for the New York City metropolitan area. Sandra says "Under federal laws, the state must revise its master plan, done in 1995 prior to the privatization of Stewart. The Clinton/Gore EPA and FAA are continuing to allow the Stewart Airport expansion to go ahead without having studied local noise and air pollution, except for phony FAA computer "estimates" that were used in a New York State plan. General Electric, the same company that has been allowed by the politicians to get away with not cleaning up their pollution in the Hudson River, now want to spread more of their pollution with Stewart Airport. http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/news/business/stories/bu081900s4.htm

NPC Ignoring Comments On FAA Policy? How come the "Noise Pollution Clearinghouse" http://www.nonoise.org hasn't written to the FAA with proposals for them to change their inhuman noise policies? If they have, I haven't seen it on their web site. This to me shows that they are not a real group concerned about noise pollution, but perhaps was just created to suck up environmental grant money while not taking any action against noise pollution. I don't know where this group gets its money to enable them to call national "conferences" where they wine and dine their carefully selected activists, but I have my suspicions. If they do ever decide to make comments to the FAA I will certainly publish them. Remember the comment period on FAA noise policy ends on August 28th. Get those letters in and send me a copy to publish.

EPA Studying Airport Air Pollution? Is the EPA changing their policy of ignoring the impacts of aviation? Citizens For The Abatement of Aircraft Noise (CAAN) says they are, although I couldn't find any news stories on it or even a mention of it on the EPA web site. If anybody knows anything about this story please let me know. You can read the CAAN report at http://www.caan.org/newsart.html#16aug00

Late Aviation News:

Read The Latest Letters To The Editor On The El Toro Airport: http://www.latimes.com/editions/orange/20000820/t000078345.html

New Jersey Crash Spurs Airport Expansion Opposition: LUMBERTON - The air tragedy that killed 11 people in Burlington County last week could become a rallying point in a grassroots fight against a $23 million expansion of South Jersey Regional Airport. http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/08/14/city/JAIR14.htm

. FAA's Environmental Page: Yes, the spawn of Satan actually has one. You can see it at: http://www.faa.gov/arp/app600/600home.htm

Anger In England At New Flight Trial: The British have a lot to learn from the FAA which hides changes in operations from the public because the last thing they want is a community up in arms when they hear their noise levels are going to be increased. http://www.herts-essex-news.co.uk/henpages/obspages/onews/onews4.html

Late Aviation News:

European Union Rejects ICAO as Forum for Hushkit Dispute Aug. 18, 2000 (World Airline News, Vol. 10, No. 33 via COMTEX) -- The European Union has rejected the International Civil Aviation Organization's jurisdiction to arbitrate the long-running hushkit dispute between it and the United States. http://library.northernlight.com/FD20000818140000068.html?cb=0&dx=1006&sc=0#doc

Feds plan summit to discuss nation's air travel woes

LOS ANGELES--U.S. Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater said Wednesday he is summoning the nation's top airline executives next week for an emergency summit to deal with unprecedented delays and cancellations that have raised concerns about the long-term viability of the system. http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/all17.html

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Aviation News Stories

August 19, 2000

Success of Concorde was always uncertain because of noise, cost

LONDON (AP) -- For its makers, Concorde proved to be the swiftest turkey in the skies. But although the British and French manufacturers persuaded airlines to take options on a total of 74 planes, only 20 were built.
 Protests about noise, national rivalries and an oil crisis all helped kill the market for supersonic airplanes.
 "It's a technical miracle, but an economic disaster," said Ronald Davies, curator of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and author of the book Supersonic Nonsense.
 "It was always bound to be uneconomical to fly," Davies said. "It was costly, it wasn't big enough, and really the nail in the coffin was when the world authorities decided it wouldn't be allowed to fly over land because of the sonic boom."
 Long an emblem of luxury and technological prowess, the supersonic jet favoured by the rich and famous may slip quietly into history after the July 25 crash of an Air France Concorde outside Paris. With official doubts mounting about the safety of Concorde's tires, British Airways indefinitely grounded its fleet Tuesday.
 The sleek, needle-nosed aircraft could cross the Atlantic at an altitude of 18,288 metres and at 2,172 kilometres per hour, completing the trip from London to New York in less than four hours -- half the time of regular jets.
 But although there were always passengers willing to pay the $10,000 US fare, the Concorde always had its detractors.
 The first signs of doubt about Concorde's future might have been oil price shocks and uncertainty about whether the noisy plane would be allowed to land in New York, said Brian Trubshaw, the test pilot who, in 1969, flew the first British Concorde flight.
 In 1963, Pan Am, British Overseas Airways Corp. and Air France had all signed options on the Concorde.
 Despite the mounting excitement, Beverly Shenstone, technical director of British Overseas Airways Corp., which would later become British Airways, called Concorde "the largest, most expensive and most dubious project ever undertaken in the development of civil aircraft."
 Nevertheless, British Airways ended up with half the world's Concorde fleet, and became its ardent defender.
 Options for 74 Concordes had been sold by 1967; eight each for British Overseas Airways Corp., Air France and Pan Am; six each for American Airlines, TWA, Eastern Airlines and United Air Lines; four each for Air Canada and Qantas; three each for Japan Air Lines, Lufthansa, Continental and Braniff; and two each for Air India, Middle East Airlines and Sabena.
 But when final orders were placed in 1972, British Airways took five planes and Air France took four. That was it.
 Britain and France produced 16 planes, in addition to four prototypes that were quickly retired, and British Airways and Air France took the unsold planes in 1979.
 Protests against the noisy engines and sonic booms led the U.S. government to ban Concorde landings in 1975, and they were banned in 1976 by the Port Authority of New York, which operates John F. Kennedy airport. The market opened up after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Port Authority's appeal.
 Through the years, the airlines tried various plans to make use of its fleet, including a joint venture with Singapore Airlines and a London-Washington-Dallas tie-up with Braniff that lasted only a year. Air France had a Paris-Washington-Mexico City service from 1978 to 1991.
 At one point, there was talk of converting a Concorde to fly for Federal Express, Trubshaw says in Concorde: The Inside Story, a book whose official publication date fell on the day after the crash.
 Britain and France both stopped underwriting Concorde's costs in 1984, and the two airlines took responsibility.
 British Airways and Air France both insist the aircraft was profitable, but refused to give details.
 The planes required eight times as much jet fuel per passenger as a 747, said Mike Stoddart of Charterhouse Securities, a London-based brokerage firm.
 Moreover, British Airways and Air France usually staffed each 100-seat Concorde with nine crew members -- almost twice as many per passenger as the 19 crew members on a 400-seat 747.

8/16/00. CAAN Commentary: The ice dam blocking studies on the human health impact of the aviation industry is beginning to crack. After stonewalling citizens and even politicians for years, the EPA is taking a serious look at the air quality at a major U.S. airport, O'Hare International, one of our largest. This study, already in progress, will run six months and will examine the chemical content of the air around O'Hare. Although other studies have measured hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, no one has looked at the really toxic chemical constituents discharged by all the operations at an airport, ground equipment as well as aircraft, and analyzed the effects these chemicals will have on people. Concurrently, the local communitiesaround O'Hare are conducting their own study on these types of chemicals and will release their results in the early fall. Additionally, there is a one million dollar study planned to look into the health risks of citizens living near Los Angeles International Airport, and in Seattle, WA, a study completed by the Department of Health showed that there are significant increases in cancer rates for people within three miles of King County's Boeing Field. Couple these with the GAO studies on noise ordered by Congress and you have the beginnings of a push to find the real true about the human costs of aviation. As these initial study results come in, the effects will snowball and there will be a demand for a full, comprenhensive evaluation of the avaition industry impact of human health. However, it will take years to pin down the real damage to people, and you can be sure that the aviation industry will vigorously resist every dollar spent to learn the truth.