Performance Features

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29109, 22 January 1960, Page 16

Performance Features

By early November, still four weeks before the Electra’s inaugural flight for T.E.A.L. from Auckland to Sydney on December 1, 97 Electras owned by 16 leading airlines operating across the Americas, the South Pacific and the Far East, had between them flown a total of 3U million miles. The Electra has already

clocked 364,000 flying hours—more than three and a half times as many flight hours as T.E.A.L. aircraft have totalled in the entire 20 years of the company’s history.

The Electra can work efficiently and economically between 5000 and 25,000 feet —below or above the weather

as required. This is in contrast to the piston engine’s efficiency at low altitudes only, and the pure jet’s at high altitudes only. The Electra has an excellent landing and take-off performance, and can operate from more than 1600 existing commercial airports through-

out the world, including the new Wellington airport. Even under conditions of bad weather and low cloud ceilings, the Electra can work from runways as short as 4300 feet.

Seating capacity varies slightly according to the ratio of first-class to tourist seats, but T.EA.L.’s standard seating pattern allows for 71 passengers—against the DC-6’s 56.