CANADA: Test Flight

Down a runway at Toronto’s Malton airport last week roared the first commercial jet transport to fly in North America. The silver and yellow “Jetliner” built by A. V. Roe Canada Ltd. took off, circled at 200 ft., then zoomed sharply to 13,000. An hour and ten minutes later Test Pilot James Orrell brought his aircraft in for a smooth landing in summer-heated bumpy air. “It was a piece of cake,” he said happily. “She handled like a fighter. Terrific.”

Canada’s bid for first place in North American jet transportation began in mid-1946 when the Jetliner plans were inked onto drawing boards. Avro’s general manager, Walter N. Deisher, a U.S.-born naturalized Canadian and ex-barnstorming pilot, set his men to work. What they gave him was a 60,000-lb., 822-ft.-long craft with a wing span of 98 ft.

With a cruising range of about 1,200 miles, Avro’s Jetliner was planned especially to meet Canadian conditions for fast, economical inter-city air service (it will not compete with the British De Havilland Comet for transocean traffic). An all-Canadian job except for its four Rolls-Royce Derwent V engines, it was designed to carry a load of 50 passengers plus crew of three, and to fly 430 m.p.h. at 30,000 ft.

On last week’s test flight, the Jetliner’s speed was held down to 317 m.p.h. Jam-packed with testing instruments, the plane is slated for months of rigorous shakedown flights; within six months a second Jetliner is expected to be ready for additional tests.

Said Manager Deisher, who predicted his jets would be flying commercial routes by 1951: “A momentous day for Canadian aviation . . .”