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Aviation History
1943
1943 - 0567.PDF
MARCH 4TH, 1943 FLIGHT 117 itself and greater assurance in specifying to the manu- facturer the difference between good and bad aircraft. But the greatest reduction in cost must still be 16oked for from an increase in traffic itself. This surely must occur as the daily life of the world adjusts itself to the wider range of contacts which aircraft confers. Before the days of express trains, a man could not live and work in Man- chester and yet attend frequent and regular meetings in London. Now he can. What the train makes possible at 200 miles distance, aircraft already makes possible at 800 miles. What needs time is the adjustment of our own outlook and daily lives to that fact. The Americans have, we know, a temperamental readi- ness to try anything once. People sometimes call them 1 • gullible. Where air trans- port is concerned, gul- libility has clearly proved its uses. But apart from1 that, please note that be- tween the two cities of San ' • Francisco and New York, which are as" close to each other socially and economically as are Manchester and Liverpool, there lies no fewer than* 2,600 miles of solid country. The same distance separ- ates London and Baghdad. And that whole vast expanse of territory is subject to one Congress, one language, one economic system. In short, the need for adjustment is largely met before the aircraft even exists. It is Heaven's gift to air transportation. The domestic air lines of the U.S.A. already carry an annual traffic of about three million passengers and fly ten million miles a month. On any trans Continental route, with short fuel stages and a large industrial and commercial population, the true cost of an air passage should fall fairly rapidly to about 3d. per seat-mile—in terms of pre-war currency. I should call that "cheap speed." But of what use will that be in poor old Europe, where you can hardly fly for half an hour without being challenged as an alien and asked to change your language, your money and your laws, let alone your political convictions? In short, the value of aircraft to European civilisation depends upon the extent to which we are prepared to be consciously European in our civilisation. If aircraft for its consummation in Europe requires the growth of a new Europeanism, then let us at least give it a chance by ensuring that all the conditions of its operation within Europe shall be internationally conceived. After all, even after the last war we contrived an International Air Convention whose pious preamble was such as to satisfy the most exacting evangelist of that date. But, except for some codification of a technical nature, no constructive attempt was ever made to implement its spirit. On the contrary. * Article 15 A single, harmless-looking sentence in Article 15 gave every State the right to '' make subject to its prior author- isation " the establishment of any air line over its territory, even though not proposing to land there. This modest reservation was wrung from its context and elevated into a major principle. Under its protection enterprising ser- vices were forbidden to start, others were suspended or diverted under pressure of blackmail exerted on some wholly different route. And this shoddy bargaining was not, you observe, the product of the much-maligned profit motive. In every case the negotiators were Government servants acting in loyalty to what they conceived to be the interests of their countries. Cannot we Europeans do something better than this when our normal life is re-established? Many of us are here in England. Are we laying the foundations now ? At least do not let us get entangled in legalistic arguments around the phrase "Freedom of the Air." Nobody wants a State to abandon ultimate sovereignty over its own air. All that matters is what it claims to do in the daily appli- cation of that sovereignty to peaceful and innocent air traffic. THE FUTURE OF AIR COMMERCE By MAJOR R. H. THORNTON, M.C. (Continued) By all means reserve the right to forbid, interrupt or divert all foreign aircraft, but abandon the right either to refuse passage to individual air lines or to dictate your own regulations regarding any aspect of international aviation which is covered by an international code. This code already standardises certain essentials of airworthi- ness, technical competence, navigational discipline, and many minor matters. Not only should it be extended in scope and authority, but the trunk air routes of the Euro- pean network should be internationally planned and equipped, and the main airports on these routes should be internationally controlled and virtually extra-territorial in status, as was once the great Free Port of Hamburg. No- thing less will suffice, if the ' dynamic of air transport is to obtain the same outlet here as elsewhere, and air- craft is to develop the same easy stride across the chequered map of Europe1 ' ' ~» as it already makes across the great continental stretches of Russia, China and North America. All this, of course, is contingent upon the question of subsidies. And in subsidies I include not merely the grant- ing of external aid to an otherwise commercial venture, but the operation of wholly State-owned services at less than true cost. No practical measure of freedom for air traffic, such as I have advocated, can ever be achieved if States are to adopt individual policies of persistent and arbitrary subsidy. Indeed, the hopes of development for any healthy and gejmine air commerce at all are involved in this ques- tion. International Air Stakes Is civil aircraft to remain for ever a high-speed thorough- bred entered, regardless of cost, for the International Air Stakes with one jockey per nation ? If so, with what object and for whose benefit? If we really wish to give artificial stimulus to the develop- ment of airciaft as an instrument of civilisation and not as a potential troop transport, it is easy enough to do so. To all aircraft engaged in international flight let us give free radio and meteorological services, and at our new extra- territorial "European" airports free landing rights and hangarage, and even, if we wish, fuel at a special inter- national price. Let us pool the cost of all these concessions in the same spirit in which we have established tor years the postal union of the world. But let us give none of these concessions to any aircraft whose operator, be he private individual or State, refuses to submit his costings to the scrutiny of a permanent international commission. Subject to that degree of effective control, let us leave aircraft free to prove in honest and open competition both the competence of its operator and its own final contribu- tion to the economics of our daily life. If we cannot achieve that measure of unanimity and cohesion, then 1 suppose we must 'reserve all our rights" and settle down once again to the jolly atmosphere of the existing Air Conven- tion, with its jockeying for position, its lobbying for " rights," the irritating farce of its Customs regulations, its vast "prohibited areas," its babyish "corridors." There is a school of thought which "suggests that the solution for all these problems is a grand International Air Transport Corporation. In a Europe whose Europeanism is so tenuous' that it could not even achieve the modest degree of cohesion I have suggested, how could such an organisation ever come to fruition or, if it did, prove any- thing but a perpetual nightmare to tjje unfortunate gentle- men entrusted with its daily administration? All these are questions in which Chambers of Industry or of Commerce, and bodies such as the Institute of Export, should take an immediate and practical interest. Trans- port is essential to trade and, therefore, the kernel of all material civilisation. The policy of the British Government of 1939 was that service was to be given by a single monopolist Corporation. The British Government of to-day being so far inarticulate .J
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