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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 1396.PDF
68 FLIGHT JULY I8TH, 1946 SWEDISH EXPANSION since no normal spares were avail- able. During the latter part of the war, these rebuilt Fortresses assisted A.B.A's DC-3S in the special service which was running between Stockholm and this country. Until the pre- invasion period, when all such ser- vices had to be tem- porarily banned, A.B.A. had made a total of 416 cross- ings of the North Sea, and apart from carrying 2,535 passengers, these aircraft had brought in a large quantity of special steel and ball-bearings. During the last year of the war the only civil services operated by A.B.A. were those to Helsinki, Berlin and Malmo. As soon, however, as the war had ended, A.B.A. began to re-open their various European services and, apart from the various internal runs, the company is now operating regularly to Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, Lisbon, London, Nice, Paris, Prague, Rome and Warsaw. One of the more useful internal Swedish air servicesis that between Stockholm and Visby, on the island of Gotland. The company's traffic office in the capitalhas been established in a 13th-century manor house. During the first half-year of post-war operations, the com- pany carried a larger number of passengers than during the very best immediately pre-war years.. In June this year, the A.B.A.-S.I.L.A. combine possessed seventeen DC-3S, six DC-4S, and the five rebuilt Fortresses. Next year S.I.L.A. will be taking delivery of four Boeing Stratocruisers—and were, in fact, the second operating company in the world to place orders for these aircraft. CIVIL AVIATION BILL PASSEDO N Monday, July 8th, the Civil Aviation Bill was. con-sidered on report. A long debate followed on the system that should be adopted by the Corporations for theemployment of their staff. Major Vernon referred to the two methods in common use; the normal Civil Service entryexamination, and the method custcftnary with joint stock com- panies—that of selecting employees from acquaintances, orfrom applicants. The Government, he said, had to choose one of those methods, or to compromise. The proposal was that an outside body appointed by theMinister and the Corporation should make the preliminary selection and offer recommendations. This clause was pro-posed in order to remove the feeling which existed in the lower grades that the higher appointments were filled by incompetentpeople. In support of the clause, Mr. Geoffrey Cooper gave the Service selection board as an example of the kind which mightbe expected to be successful. Air Cdr. Harvey complained that there were directors with no knowledge of civil aviation,whereas men with twenty to thirty years' flying experience were forced to resign with a small pension, Mr. Ivor Thomas, in reply, said that he considered thepensions to be generous, but he would like to see some scheme by which pilots obtained administrative experience during theirlast years of flying and could then carry on in some normal job. He went on to say that the idea of tests for the appoint-ment of members to the staffs of the Corporation made him shudder, and he asked what guarantee there could be that theboards would set the right tests. Mr. Thomas stated that B.O.A.C. and B.E.A., were, in fact, using an Appointment andPromotion Board. The Attorney-General stated that the Government wouldgive further consideration to the question of appointments, not so as to impose upon the Corporations an outside body whichwould be responsible for appointments and promotions within the service, but to consider whether there was any means ofassuring and protecting the independence of the Corporations, at the same time ensuring that those people available forappointment within them were persons possessing the proper qualifications. Major Vernon withdrew the amendment. Col. J. R. Hutchinson moved a clause to compensate privateundertakings which had been forced out of business when the war began, and were now unable to start again because of nationalization and the provisions of the Civil Aviation Bill.This clause, the Attorney-General said, proposed to provide gratuities to those who happened to be concerned in civil avia-tion before the war, not because the Government was taking over or confiscating anything from them now, but, because, in *939J they were prevented from continuing their activities. Mr. A. T. Lennox Boyd said that the Government werecashing-in on the labour sacrifices of some dozen people who had made Britain air-minded at a time when it was going tobe, for the first time, a profitable business. Sir Thomas Moore made a plea on moral grounds lor compensation for the com-panies, but the motion was defeated. A strong appeal was made by him to reduce the maximum penalty for infringementof the Corporation's reservations. The Attorney-General ex- plained that His Majesty's judges could be relied upon to makethe punishment fit the crime, and it was not the "honest ex- pilot '' who was the likely transgressor, but the '' crafty,cunning financiers." The Bill provides for the constitution of an Air TransportAdvisory Council, and there is a proviso that the council shall not be required to hear representations from the public onmatters regulated by an international agreement of which the Government is a party. Continuing the debate on Thursday,July nth, it was proposed by Mr. Lennox Boyd that this proviso should be deleted. After some debate Mr. Ivor Thomasamplified the matter by stating that the exclusion did not refer to agreements between operators but to international agree-ments. A further amendment was moved by Mr. Mikardo* thatmembers of the Corporations should be appointed in a full- time executive capacity only. Mr. Ivor Thomas, in defend-ing the Bill, said that the Minister may appoint all the members of the board on a full-time executive basis, if he so wished, butthe Minister believed that there were occasions where part-time directors might have a very desirable function and in which nofull-time director who was available could do the work for him. Mr. Ivor Thomas, in concluding the debate, said that hebelieved that the plan opened up a bright future ior British civil aviation, and that our public Corporations would proveequal to any other undertaking in the world, and would open the way towards that internationalization of civil aviationwhich we so much wished to see.
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