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Aviation History
1946
1946 - 1989.PDF
OCTOBER JRD, 1946 FLIGHT THE STATUS OF CIVIL AVIATION IN 1946 given by air carriage over surface trans-mission. In that direction the future seemed to lie ;- but the Empire Air MailScheme had been a great experiment and a pioneering effort in the development ofair transport by bold decisions taken at the peak of opportunity. Sir Henry thought it was important torecall that within the space of six years two Committees sat under the Chairman-ship of Lord Gorell. The first, in 1933, was appointed to consider a number ofcivil aviation questions concerned chiefly with the control of flying. The mostimportant development arising from the Committee's Report was the establish-ment of the Air Registration Board, which had done suchsterling work in the past 10 years, as evidenced, by thegrowing scope and volume of the duties which had beenassigned to it by the Govern- ment. The Civil Aviation Act In 1920 the Government ofthe day had held the view that the civil air services must ulti-mately be self-supporting. That was the view of theGovernment of to-day, and they would seek by inter-national agreement pro- gressively to eliminate allforms of subsidy. They recog- nized, however, that if airtransport was to fulfil its func- tion of providing services inthe public interest, some measure of State aid wouldperhaps be necessary to sup- port essential but unremunera-tive services. The Government consider that the policy en-shrined in the Act offers the best guarantee to the public of dis-interested expansion of the nation's air services witheconomy and efficiency. The Act would ensure, also,the implementation of the fundamental principle beh'indthe Government's policy, namely, planned order in theair. For the present, the plan - was necessarily a national plan,because the nations of the world were not yet ready toplace their air services under the control of a single world-wide owning and oper-ating body. The plan had been so framed, however, that it could be readilyassimilated into any future scheme of international organization. Arrange-ments had been made 'or the fullest co- operation—by means of parallel opera-tions—with the Dominions and Colonies. Our approach was towards international-ism ; but it was an approach only to be made in step with our Commonwealthpartners and through the development of our common Empire services. These, SirHenry believed, would demonstrate the needs and possibilities of world air trans-port in the future. , Trans-Atlantic Agreement Once again referring to the 1920s and 1930s there had been, he said, many international agreements between indi- vidual countries, but these agreements were mostly bilateral, and lew were mul- tilateral. It was, therefore, gratifyingto record that the machinery of Com- monwealth collaboration had played aforemost part in one of the first multi- lateral agreements to be signed in thatperiod. During the Imperial Economic Conference, held in Ottawa in 1932, acommittee was appointed to consider the question of an air mail service across theNorth Atlantic Ocean. In due course, agreement was reached in Ottawa inNovember, 1935, that trans-Atlantic survey flights should be made as soon aspossible, and that a joint operating company should be formed. An under-standing was reached with the United 1946 FRANS-OCeAN CLASS A diagrammatic comparison of airport dimensions from 1929 to the requirements of the immediate fulure. States for reciprocal landing facilities inthe territories of the countries concerned. The formation of the joint operatingcompany had been interrupted by the outbreak of war, but the experiencegained on the trial flights across the North Atlantic and the comprehensiveground organization which had been planned and instituted for these flightshad proved of incalculable value during the war. It was equally the case that Comtr.on- wealth associations in other regions, and particularly in regard to the Empire Air Routes, had provided a demonstration of the possibilities of international co- operation on which the future would turn. Aeronautical matters were, he believed, first discussed between Com-, monwealth representatives .at the Im- perial Conference of 1922. The discus- sions were renewed at the Imperial Con- ference of 1926. Commonwealth consultations continuedthroughout the late war, and, when the time had arrived to consider the shapeof the post-war world, one of the first actions was to convene a CommonwealthConference, in October, 1943, at which principles for greater freedom of the airon a basis to be regulated by an inter- national air authority were agreed.- Itbecame clear that the closest agreement existed between the CommonwealthGovernments on the general principles which should govern international airtransport, though differing opinions were held as to the practical application ofthose principles. To plan and advise on thetechnical organization of the Empire routes, a Common-wealth Air Navigation and Ground Organization Com-mittee (C.A.N.G.O.) had been set up with representativesfrom the United Kingdom, the Dominions and the Colonies.On the operators' side, a Com- monwealth Air TransportOperators' Committee had been established to study the ques-tions of mutual interest and to advise the CommonwealthGovernments on practical oper- ating problems. Anglo-American Differences Sir Henry Self then stressedthat against this background of the future pattern of air trans-port had been super-imposed the seemingly • fundamentaldifference between the American and British attitudes towardsthe economic and political con- trol of air services. The Ameri-cans favoured world-wide " free:for-all " competition (de-spite the rigid • regulation of their domestic air transport)and the British favoured regu- lated competition. Over-shadowing all was the deter- mination to avoid a return tothe wasteful competition and subsidy wars which had dark-ened the arena in former years. In such a situation the oldParis and Havana Conventions were totally inadequate. Anew Convention, with world-wide appli- cation, had become essential. As we hadseen, the main defect of the earlier Con- ventions was their inadequate provisionfor international regulation in the econo- mic field, since they had dealt principallywith technical matters. These were dis- cussed at a number of exploratory talksbetween those Governments which were specially interested in the developmentof post-war air transport. The discus- sions had indicated a substantial measureof agreement on such important subjects ns the right of transit and non-trafTicstops, the control of rates and competi- tive practices, the gradual curtailment otsubsidies, the need for uniform operating and safety standards, the use of airportsnnd facilities on a non-discriminating basis, and the operation of airports andfacilities in certain areas of the world. With these ideas in mind, the BritishGovernment, in October, 1944. pub lished a White Paper setting out a plan
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