SPCA Météore 63

Météore 63
Role Airliner[1]
National origin France
Manufacturer SPCA
First flight 3 September 1925[1]
Primary user Air Union Lignes d’Orient[2][3][4]
Number built 3[1]


The SPCA Météore 63 (French for "Meteor") was a flying boat built in France in the 1920s for use as an airliner.[1] It was the first product of the SPCA company (Société Provençale de Constructions Aéronautiques), founded by Laurent-Dominique Santoni when he left CAMS in 1925.[5] The Météore was a conventional biplane design for its day, with single-bay wings of unequal span braced with struts and wire.[4][6] The lower wing was mounted to the top of the aircraft's hull, with trusswork above it that carried three engines mounted tractor-fashion in the interplane gap.[4][6] The lower wing also carried outrigger pontoons near its tips.[4][6] The empennage was of conventional design, with the stabilizer carried part-way up the fin.[4][6] The flight deck was open but the separate cabin, with seating for six passengers, was fully enclosed within the hull and electrically heated.[6] The structure was of timber throughout except for the struts that carried the engines, which were steel tube.[6] The wings were covered in fabric.[6]

In 1926, SPCA entered a Météore in a competition for transport seaplanes organised by the French Undersecretariat for Aeronautics,[6] the Grand Prix des Hydravions de Transport Multimoteurs (Grand Prize of multi-engine transport seaplanes).[4] Piloted by Ernest Burri, the Météore won first place and a FF 100,000 prize.[7] It was also the first French transport seaplane to which Bureau Veritas awarded a first-class airworthiness certificate.[6] The same year, Lignes Aériennes Latécoère trialled the type on a mail route between Marsailles and Algiers,[6] the first trip taking place on 22 October.[4]

Because of the Météore's long range, Air Union Lignes d’Orient (AULO) ordered an example in January 1927.[4][8] In October that year, Maurice Noguès flew it from Marsailles to Beirut but crashed and sank off Naples during the return journey.[4][8] Nevertheless, AULO purchased a second example in May 1928, and with this aircraft inaugurated a regular service between the two cities on 6 June 1929.[8] On 17 February 1931, the Météore also established the Paris–Saigon route for Air Orient, which had been formed by a merger of AULO and Air Asie the previous year. Over its lifespan, the Météore covered 100,000 km (62,000 mi).[4]


Operators

Specifications

Data from Parmentier 1998

General characteristics

Performance


Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Parmentier 1998
  2. ↑ The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft, p.2860
  3. ↑ Taylor 1989, p.835
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 L'Association des Amis du Vieux La Ciotat
  5. ↑ Hartmann 2004, p.8
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "The Paris Aero Show 1926", p.788
  7. ↑ "French Competition for Transport Seaplanes", p.491
  8. 1 2 3 Hartmann 2000, p.6

References


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, April 08, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.