George Bayliss Lothian George Bayliss Lothian George Bayliss Lothian was born November 20, 1909 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was one of the first pilots of Trans-Canada Air Lines in 1937, which later became Air Canada. He died February 13, 2000. George Lothian was the first Canadian pilot to log 100 aircraft crossings of the North Atlantic and set the trans-Atlantic crossing speed record three times. When he retired from Air Canada in 1968 he had logged over 21,000 as pilot in command of many different piston and jet transport aircraft. He reluctantly gave flight instruction in the Vickers Viscount turboprop airliner
Turboprop the general public press was in the February 1944 issue of the British aviation publication "Flight", which included a detailed cutaway drawing of what a possible future turboprop engine could look like. The drawing was very close to what the future Rolls-Royce Trent would look like. The first British turboprop engine was the Rolls-Royce RB.50 Trent, a converted Derwent II fitted with reduction gear and a Rotol five-bladed propeller. Two Trents were fitted to Gloster Meteor "EE227" — the sole "Trent-Meteor" — which thus became the world's first turboprop-powered aircraft, albeit a test-bed not intended for production. It first flew