Aircraft safety

Press, 5 August 1985, Page 12

Aircraft safety

Sir,—An alarming trend with modern airliners that will lead to disaster sooner rather than later is the reduction from four or three engines to only two for huge aircraft carrying large numbers of people over vast expanses of water. Even the Boeing 747 that flew into volcanic ash gave its crew twice the options when attempting to restart four engines. Airlines will reap huge cost benefits with the fuel efficiency of newgeneration twin jets, but the public reaps a significant decrease in safety. How adequate is the singleengine performance out of Wellington? Yesterday’s Boeing 747 bird strike in two engines at a crucial stage of take-off makes people contemplate how the wonderful computerised trans-oceanic semijumbo Boeing 767 Air New Zealand is bringing into service would have coped with birds in two of its only •two engines just after lift off. Could Air New Zealand please comment?—Yours, etc., W. J. C. ROYDS. July 30, 1985.

[Mr Bob. Wallace, public relations manager of Air New Zealand, replies: “The Boeing 767 has now been in commercial use for three years and is in service with nearly 20 airlines. It has been operated very satisfactorily over long distances by a number of overseas carriers. The single-engine performance of the 767 out of Wellington is superior — certainly it loses nothing in comparison with the very successful Boeing 737 which has been flying in New Zealand since 1969. Twin-jet pilots are trained to use different techniques from four-jet pilots when handling bird strike problems. For instance a 767 captain would have elected to keep one engine going in the circumstances recently encountered at Christchurch.”]