Safety regulation usually has some direct impact on airline costs. All operators aim to operate safely - some more than others - and one might ask, should safety be left to manufacturers and operators, all of whom have a real vested interest in high standards, including the added spur of potential litigation? However, there is, I believe, a clear wish in the minds of the public, and hence governments, for independent and positive regulation. Major fatal accidents frequently cause a clamour of demands for higher safety, and governments, through their appointed bodies, are expected to act. Airlines broadly accept such pressures but wish to see common and consistent standards applied so that the economic burden is spread equally - preferably internationally.

ICAO requires all aircraft involved in international navigation to conform to ‘a detailed and comprehensive code’, but the detailed provisions and their interpretation may vary from country to country.

A mathematical model of unsteady aerodynamic effects for use in lateral aircraft dynamics has been proposed based on Weissinger’s arrangement of trailing vortex system. The suggested model is shown to be suitable for use in parameter extraction algorithm. Simulated flight data of an example airplane has been analysed through maximum likelihood parameter estimation algorithm in frequency-domain to show the effect of inclusion and omission of unsteady aerodynamics on estimated parameters.

The imposition of swirl on co-axial jets exhausting into confined space, akin to a combustor model, has far reaching effects on their mixing and flow development. In the present paper, the influence of swirl on both the jets has been determined in terms of velocity and pressure distributions in the confined space. It has been shown that swirl in the central jet leads to faster mixing whereas higher swirl in the annular jet improves both mixing and development.

The flying wing supersonic transport is simply a straight wing of high aspect ratio and of sufficient size to contain passengers comfortably. Such a wing can be steered to different sweep angles and thus adapted to efficient flight over a range of Mach numbers.

The writer demonstrated such a wing by flying models at the First International Congress in the Aeronautical Sciences. The potential advantages of such a flying wing were discussed by G. H. Lee of Handley Page Aircraft at a subsequent Congress. The present paper gives recent studies of flight stability, efficiency and operational problems. It is suggested that by limiting the Mach number to twice current jet speed fuel efficiency approaching that of present day subsonic transports could be achieved. This goal would probably also require the development of variable bypass engines.