Shannon Airport -- a history by Valerie Sweeney

Author:Valerie Sweeney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valerie Sweeney
Published: 2015-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

THE TWA FLIGHT DISPATCH CENTRE

Martin Herlihy started his aviation career as one of the first Irish meteorological assistants at Foynes. After the Foynes operation ceased, he moved to Dublin, but he was immediately interested when he saw a TWA advertisement for staff at Shannon. He applied and was successful.

“Both TWA and Pan American Airlines decided to establish their own Flight Dispatch Centres,” he explained. “They were looking for people with aviation experience, who were willing to be trained as flight dispatchers.

“All U.S. flight operations are controlled by the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) in respect of operating procedures, air worthiness etc. It’s an FAA requirement that all flight operations are conducted under the joint authority of the captain of each flight and a ground-based Flight Dispatcher holding a licence from the FAA. The document, signed by both parties, is known as a flight release.

“When I arrived at Shannon, the Flight Dispatch Centre was under the control of Capt. John Harwin, former chief pilot of TWA’s North Atlantic operations.

“After an extensive training course, we received our licences at the end of 1946. We then gradually replaced the U.S. dispatchers. One of the trainee dispatchers, Jim Devoy, later became the first Irish Station Manager of TWA and I became first Irish person appointed as Chief Dispatcher at Shannon and later became Station Manager.”

The late Dennis Egan also worked in the operations and dispatch office of TWA during those pioneering years.

“I suppose you could call us the backroom boys, as our office was out of sight of the public,” he recalled. “We did all the planning for the crews crossing the Atlantic and also for those going onwards from Shannon to Europe.

“We had no computers: everything was done by hand. We used geometrical instruments to plot routes across the Atlantic on a meteorological chart, showing the winds and how they were blowing, and we planned our tracks to avoid the heavy winds and take the advantage of tail winds if we could get them.

“We used dividers and plastic geometrical instruments to measure the isobars of the charts. If they were close together the wind was stronger: if they were spread apart the wind was lighter.

“We made a great circle to plot the shortest route. If the winds on the great circle were too strong, we plotted an alternative path along the Southern route. We had to do that for all flights out of Europe which were transiting Shannon and crossing the Atlantic.”

The communications network was by teleprinter. “We employed girls who were trained to use the teleprinter. They typed messages onto a perforated strip, which was fed into the machine. That went by Teletype to London, where it was directed on to Paris, from where it was then relayed to the States.

“We had another printer called a Telex. This could be opened up to a similar machine in an office to the States or in Europe. We could type a message in Shannon, which would come out on the other operator’s machine. He could then type in his reply, which would immediately come up on our machine.

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