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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 0292.PDF
FLIGHT, 23 January 1959 141 Efforts by the Airways Corporations to dispose of their piston fleets have recently been in the news. The top picture shows a B.E.A. crew demon- strating an Elizabethan to King Hussein of Jordan in Amman. The hwer photographs depict B.O.A.C.'s surplus 749 Constellations and Canadair 4 Argonauts at London Airport. According to the latest edition of "B.O.A.C. News" eight out of 16 Constellations have so far been sold. Three Argonauts were sold to E.A.A.C. last year, but one has since been returned. Another has been bought by Overseas Aviation AIR COMMERCE AIRPORT ECONOMIZING 'TAXPAYERS are given few indications of the costs of sub-A sidizing British airports. Civil Service accountancy methods make it difficult even for skilled economists to assess precisely thelosses involved in the provision of airport facilities, but unofficial estimates of the amounts at stake range between £7m and £10m. Increasing Exchequer disquiet at the inability of the M.T.C.A.to break-even on their airport operations has led to a movement to transfer ownership of certain airports from the Ministry toappropriate local authorities. The five airports in the London area together appear to accountfor about one-half the total loss. Transference of Gatwick would lead to a small reduction, but this would be more than offset bythe possible development of Blackbushe as London's "third air- port." But the possibility of transferring ownership of the five is asunlikely—and as inappropriate—as finding customers for the nine northern airfields in the Scottish "highlands and islands" or forSt. Mary's and St. Just in the extreme west. The real losses on operating the remaining airports at Britain'sprovincial centres amount to some £3m. The airports which show the least chance of breaking-even are not the larger centres suchas Belfast and Glasgow but those where traffic is lowest. This explains the M.T.C.A.'s desire to get rid of airports such asElmdon, Squires Gate and Eastleigh. (Yeadon is in a rather different position: it has been owned by the Air Ministry andoperated by a local company but will in future be controlled by the municipal authorities of Leeds and Bradford.) The typical provincial airport appears to involve an operatingloss of about £50,000. When finance charges and depreciation are considered the overall loss is between £100,000 and £150,000.Such amounts are not great, and in many instances enterprising management combined with increased traffic could reduce them tonegligible levels. But municipal authorities will not be anxious to shoulder these responsibilities until they are confident about thelong-term future for their local airports. And, unfortunately, nobody has a very clear idea about the future of Britain's internalair services. A NEW TOUR OPERATOR AS if to confound a government that is vaguely trying to•**• rationalize the British air transport industry, new inde- pendents continue to enter into the business. The latest namesare those of Air Safaris and their associate, Safari Travel. Two Vikings are now operating from Southend under their new livery.These two aircraft will be familiar to registration spotters as two ex-Airwork short-nosed Vikings. Although Air Safaris is a new name to the travelling public, theparent organization can trace its history back to 1952 when Meredith Air Transport was founded in this country. Meredith'sDC-3, which was operated mainly on charters to South Africa, was replaced in 1953 by three Vikings, and these were sold to TrekAirways for their Johannesburg-Europe service. Last year saw Trekair place DC-4s on their mainline service and the Vikingswere returned to the U.K. and restored to the British register. Meanwhile the name of Meredith Air Transport had beenchanged to African Air Safaris. Last year the Vikings were operated on inclusive tours and charter flights to Europe andSouth Africa. The airline has applied to the A.T.AC, for per- mission to operate tours this year to various multiple destinations(mostly inclusive tours have in the past covered a single destina- tion), the most interesting of these being a four-week circulartour of Africa for an inclusive fee of about £350. NO-SHOW SHOWDOWN ""THERE is no reason to believe that American experience ofA no-show penalties will not apply to European carriers. Damag- ing as no-shows have been to all U.S. carriers, the climate ofcompetition is such that penalties can be effectively placed on erring passengers only if all the airlines are agreed upon upholdingthe sanctions. American Airlines, it will be recalled, recently backed out of a U.S. domestic no-show agreement.B.E.A. have for some time been troubled about the proportion of booked capacity that is not utilized. One way to tackle theproblem is to make allowance in the reservations system for a given percentage of no-show passengers. The Corporation is at presentinvestigating the implications of such action on international ser- vices, and meanwhile has decided to adopt another solution onthe Channel Island routes: imposition of a £1 booking deposit, intended to prevent flippant reservations from being made. Butagainst this is the possibility that passengers will merely transfer their bookings to another carrier. As Jersey Airlines and theBritish independents are not planning to introduce a no-show deposit a certain amount of diversion may be expected. In pastyears B.E.A.'s capacity on the routes to the Channel Islands has never caught up with peak demand: for this reason a moderatedegree of diversion will probably be a good thing for B.E.A., for Jersey Airlines, for the other independents and—last but notleast—for the customer. LEADING COMMONWEALTH CARRIER? THE outstanding feature of the post-war development of airtransport in the Commonwealth has been the steady and rapid emergence of Canada as a major civil air power. Underlying thisgrowth was the expansion of the dominion's leading carrier, T.C.A. Until recent years B.O.A.C. have managed to retain an easy leadas the largest airline in the British Commonwealth, but this posi- tion was threatened in 1957 and the latest figures suggest thatT.C.A. might well take first place in 1959. While B.O.A.C. were struggling against economic recession andindustrial unrest. T.C.A. moved forward rapidly. The number of passengers carried in 1958 increased by 15 per cent to 21million, while the volume of passenger-miles rose even more sharply—by 17 per cent—to l,632 million. Capacity was kept incheck and load-factor fell but negligibly irom 71 to 70 per cent. The volume of mail and freight traffic was substantially un-changed. , ...... -
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