Viewing page 447 of 507
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
438 HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM The increase in demand for foreign travel is particularly significant for the demand for helicopter services at gateway points. Foreign travel usually involves long distances. Subsonic aircraft have decreased the travel time substantially and supersonic travel will result in further decreases. On a New York to Paris flight a Mach 2.2 aircraft will cut present flight time to 3 hours 54 minutes. A Mach 3 aircraft would reduce flight time by another 45 minutes. With advances in technology making such drastic reduction in travel time over the international portion of the journeys, passengers will be more and more aware of the inadequacies of conventional travel between the airport and the origin or destination of the journey within the city area. When piston aircraft were being flown on nonstop New York-Paris flights, the surface travel time at New York and Paris represented 13 per cent of total surface and air time. With subsonic aircraft, the ration of surface time to air time increases to 22 per cent and with supersonic travel, surface time will account for 34 per cent of total travel time. New York-Paris [[5 columned table]] | | Surface Time | Airborne Time | Total | % Surface | |---|---|---|---|---| | | Hours | Hours | Hours | | | Piston | 2.0 | 13.5 | 15.5 | 13% | | Subsonic Jet | 2.0 | 6.9 | 8.9 | 22 | | Supersonic Jet Mach 2.2 | 2.0 | 3.9 | 5.9 | 34 | [[/5 columned table]] Source: Official Airline Guide; Federal Aviation Agency. With airborne travel time decreasing with advanced in aircraft design, the technology lag involved between the airborne portion of the journey and the surface portion has widened. The technology lag is one produced by the use of conventional surface vehicles, in which there has been little technological advance and the use of air vehicles which have become increasingly more advanced. As the value of time savings continue to increase with increases in the nation's economic activity, penalties to the traveling public of this technology lag will become even more severe. The use of helicopters represents an application of air technology to the airport transportation segment of the journey. Through its use it is possible to bring the benefits of air transportation over both the intercity and the intracity segments of air journeys. Although the time savings involved in the use of helicopters are obvious, any precise measurement is difficult. The problem arises from the fact that the origins and destinations of airport traffic are not known precisely. Also travel time varies substantially by time of day so that the problem of whether to apply minimum or maximum or arithmetic average of both is a perplexing statistical problem. A study of airport transportation prepared for the Federal Aviation Agency indicates that the median airport travel time at 23 large cities is 30-50 minutes.[[footnote callout]]1[[/footnote callout]] Much of the demand for airport transportation comes at a time of day when urban traffic congestion is at a peak dur to commutation travel so that, in most of the cases, the higher figure is the most realistic. Regardless of the difficulty of giving a precise measurement to over-all time savings arising from the use of helicopters, the most significant point is that they exist. (The reason given for the use of helicopters by respondents of our questionnaire survey were "time saving" and "convenience".) [[footnote]]1 Airport Transportation, Human Sciences Research, Inc., prepared for the Bureau of Research and Development, Federal Aviation Agency, 1961.[[/footnote]] III-47
Transcription Notes:
1-30-2021: Reopened for editing; Correct table formatting and some values; Add missing transcriptions; Marking for review
