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Aviation History
1948
1948 - 0138.PDF
u8 FLIGHT JANUARY 20.TH, 194S CIVIL AVIATION NEWS STAR PANTHER : The B.S.A.A. Tudor IV G-AHNJ on the tarmac at London Airport viewed from beneath the wing of a Constellation. The n.S.A.A. C. Accounts: American Constructors Losses : B.O.A.C. Interests Overseas The Minister of Civil Aviation Explains OPENING the debate in the House of Lords on Wednesday,January 21st, Viscount Swinton drew attention to thecondition of British civil aviation and the operation and finan- cial results of the national airline corporations. He wasanxious to discover whether there was any concealed subsidy and whether aircraft which were loaned or leased to Govern-ment Corporations were charged for at a commercial rent. Criticism was made of the placing of aircraft orders and Vis-count Swinton said that he had never heard of a practice similar to that of the Ministry of Supply in any other country.He proposed that since the Tudor IV had been flown by B.S.A.A. with success, then the Tudor Is should be convertedand the Mark IV should be used for Commonwealth routes. He also suggested that the Corporations should order their ownaircraft. The Marquess of Reading referred to the Courtney Reportand said that what it revealed seemed to contain almost every ingredient which those who liked bureaucratic control hopedwould be avoidable and those who disliked it prophesied would be present. He was unable, he said, to come to any logicalconclusion as to why the Ministry of Supply were allowed to intervene and hold up the matter at all from the beginning,and yet obviously the presence ot the extra and extraneous department was one of the primary causes for the muddle anddelay. He hoped that the Government's observations attached to the Courtney Report were not final, and that theywere considering the matter with the intention of making radical changes and amendments. He suggested that thevenerable slogan "Peace, Retrenchment and Reform" might perhaps commend itself to the Minister: peace between theconflicting, or at any rate non-co-operating bodies who were associated or should be associated in these operations ; retrench-ment which would at least bring the figures of loss down to a more reasonable size; and reform which would enable us toavoid in the future being confronted with any such document. In .reply to the critics, Lord Nathan, Minister of Civil Avia-tion, made no apology for the losses incurred, but drew atten- tion to the achievements of B.O.A.C. m the transition from thetasks of war to those of peacetime aviation. B.O.A.C. had been called upon to reorganize in a highly competitive field andto expand services in all parts of the world. In addition, responsibility had to be accepted in foreign countries which served important national and Commonwealth interests. LordNathan gave as an example of the lesults achieved the B.O.A.C. net route mileage which in the year 1946-47 was53-998 and in August, 1947, 62,000. An example of services not economic but essential was the York service to the MiddleEast, which had been increased in February, 1947, from two to four a week and which cost some ^600,000. Ihe Halton ser-vice to \Yest Africa cost ^9,500 a week. Explaining the reasons why one corporation had made asmall profit and the other two substantial losses, and the suggestion that the profit had been made by a concern %*V»>Jljlinitially by private enterprise, tin- Minister paid that the cir- cumstances facing the three corporations wwc vastly different.B.S.A.A. were operating two long-distance trunk routes, the fact that they were first in the post-war sphere of Europe andSouth Atlantic operations assured them a good traffic demand requiring the minimum ground organization at seven and laterij staging posts. By contrast, B.E.A., with approximately the same traffic turnover, were operating on 14 overseas routesand a network of internal services, many of which were uneco- nomic, B.E.A.C. maintained 24 overseas stations and 27 athome. B.S.A.A. were operating only two types of aircraft, five Lancastrians and eleven Yorks, and the former were hiredat ,£2,000 a year—an exceptionally small charge for aircraft in the budget of the operator. He compared also the 16B.S.A.A. aircraft with the 140, of nine different types, operated by B.O.A.C. He felt it was a little ungracious to make suchcomparisons, but it was essential in view of some iwguments put forward. . Referring to the costly development in air transport, theMinister said that any normal commercial undertaking would expect to incur development expenses which would be met outof share capital over a long period of years. Had B.O.A.C. been a normal commercial undertaking, development woul<!have had to wait until suitable types of aircraft were available, and in their period of growth the tasks would have to belimited. Lord Nathan suggested that neither course would have been in the national interests. Similarly for aircrewtraining, Lord Nathan said the cost to B.O.A.C. had amounted to £1,095,000 and to B.E.A.C. ^590,500. It would have beennormal practice to spread all these costs ove jt-i five- or seven- year period, but the whole cost had been borne in the yeai s-
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