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Aviation History
1959
1959 - 0723.PDF
360 Correspondence B.E.A.'s Pool AgreementsI HAVE read with great interest the article by J. M. Ramsden which appeared in your issue of February 20 under the heading of "B.E.A.'s Competition." Your readers will recall that in this article Mr. Ramsden questions B.E.A.'s policy of pooling revenue with the many European airlines with which we are now in competition. There is a suggestion in this article that our action in entering into these various pools has been influenced by a desire to find a "lazy way out," but Mr. Ramsden's final sentence implying that we are an "enlightened airline" does not seem to be on all fours with the suggestion that we are merely looking for an easy way of life. Indeed, I do not believe that B.E.A.'s history of expansion in the thirteen years of its existence, to the point where it is now one of the largest airlines in the world, suggests in any way that we are pooling to avoid competition or to build up a cartel which could possibly be harmful to the travelling public. There must be, therefore, a compelling reason which has prompted us to enter into a fairly widespead network of pools, and Mr. Ramsden himself suggests several possible explanations. In the first place he suggests that "pools prevent the scheduling of excessive capacity—the most usually wasteful result of airline competition." This is really the nub of the situation and, although the Air Research Bureau figures may suggest that, taking the European airlines as a whole, pools do not produce higher load factors, I can only say that this is not our experience. The second point that Mr. Ramsden makes is not an important ope because we can, and do, reach mutual agreements with other airlines who handle each other's services whether we are in pool with them or not. His third suggestion is as accurate and as important as his first, namely that "Pools provide the public with a more convenient spread of services throughout the day, avoiding attempts by competing carriers to 'hog' peak times." No truer statement could be made than this. I well remember in pre-pooling days on the Stockholm run that both S.A.S. and ourselves had a departure from Stockholm to London within minutes of each other around 9 o'clock in the morning. There- after there was no service to London for twenty-four hours. Whilst both companies were trying to "hog" this time in the belief that it was the best commercial one, by no stretch could the resulting schedule be considered as being the best from the public's point of view. Today, in pool, there are morning and afternoon services. As one of the few major airlines in the world who have to subsist on short-haul routes alone, at the same time meeting deficits from domestic services, you will know that our economics rest always on a knife-edge. The only way in which we can produce a profit at the end of the year is by high aircraft and crew utilization. Pools, by enabling us to spread our services over the day in co-operation with our pool partners (instead of "hogging" them in full com- petition), give us the opportunity of obtaining that high utilization for our fleet which would not otherwise be possible on a short-haul network such as ours. By this means we achieve lower costs and a greater percentage sale of the capacity we offer, and it is by a continuation of this policy, in my belief, that we shall be able to advance towards mass travel at lower fares, a policy to which we are irrevocably committed. In this -letter I have concentrated only on those pools which your article suggests are not convincingly justifiable. The other types of pools into which we enter, namely the "entry-fee" pool which enables us to extend our business in certain countries, and the pool which encourages a limitation of frequencies on those short-haul routes cross-subsidized by our long-haul competitors are, in Mr. Ramsden's view and, of course, mine also, entirely justifiable. Perhaps the use of the word "pool" encourages an idea of restrictive practices and maybe we should be happier by referring to these arrangements as "commercial agreements," which is what they are. They will count as restrictive practices only when they are in any way_ restrictive to our capacity and so to our passengers. Unused capacity on the airlines of Europe today does not suggest anything of this sort. Indeed, our whole object is the very opposite —to reduce our costs, increase our load factors and get more people into the air at prices which they can afford to pay. One last word—pools are not a lazy way out for anyone, because they do not remove the competitive element. Capacities on which pools are based are revised annually and the unsuccessful partner in the pool will have to submit to a smaller share of the capacity when each re-assessment is made. This does not, I am thankful to say, produce an atmosphere in which there can be any tendency to relax. Ruislip, Middx, ANTHONY H. MIL WARD. Chief Executive, British European Airways, .,;• - FLIGHT, 13 March 1959 Crew Complements ; i; i r ?1 r r ""THE question of crew complements has provided-the aviation *• world with both speculation and, in some directions, wishful thinking. Recent events in America have shown the depth of feel- ing which exists, and it is fortunate that both in America and in the United Kingdom the legislators are standing firm. It may be helpful to your readers if they are informed that at least one of the major Corporations in this country have outlined their future requirement of crew complement and have agreed with this Association that a specialist engineer officer will be carried on all present (and, indeed, future) aircraft; further that, so far as can be seen both now and into the future, a specialist navigating officer will be carried when legislation requires his carriage. The concept which the Corporation have submitted to the Association is essentially based on a minimum crew of four. London, E.I. J. G. K. GREGORY. Assistant General Secretary, Civil Aviation, the Merchant Navy and Air Line Officers Association. British Light AircraftI FEEL that I must join issue with Mr. Norman Jones concern- ing the third paragraph of his letter to you in your issue of February 13. I do not think it can be said that "we in this country are fully equipped" to produce light aircraft, as long as there is no suitable British engine for these aircraft. It is true, as Mr. Jones says, that as long ago as 1926 we were leading the world in private aeroplanes, but I suggest that this was due to the fact that at that time we produced the Cirrus Mk 1 engine (four cylinders in line, air-cooled); to quote an advertise- ment of the day, "the Cirrus engine made the light aeroplane possible." Today the need would seem to be for a horizontal engine on the lines of the Lycoming or Continental, and although two or three attempts have been made in the past to produce such an engine in this country nothing has come of them. The engine is perhaps a somewhat unglamorous part of an aircraft but history provides many examples of the right type of engine being responsible for the production of the right type of aircraft. London, W.I. J. STEWART. [Major Jack Stewart, O.B.E., the well known aviation consultant.—Ed.] Pointless "Security"? T^HE release by the Air Ministry of information regarding per- •*• formance and weight figures for several types of aircraft now in first-line Royal Air Force and Fleet Air Arm service was most welcome and well set out in one of your latest issues [February 13, p. 224]. But it does raise a question in the mind: Just how ridicu- lous is our system of official secrecy where military aircraft are concerned? Let us take a few examples. Performance figures for the Meteor night-fighter have just been released, more than two years after the Suez crisis, when one of our Valiants was attacked by an NF Meteor over Egypt. Soviet technicians had been in Egypt then for some time. Does anyone believe that they did not at that time know all about these Meteors? Then there are the Hunters of the Iraqi Air Force. There can be little doubt that any information worth having about the Hunter quickly went where it was least wanted by us. And how long ago it seems that a Red Air Force general was given a ride in a Hunter Trainer! Getting on for three years now. Canberras have been going to air forces just as friendly towards the Iron Curtain countries as towards ourselves, for quite some time. But only now are the details about this ten-year-old bomber given. I submit that these farcical cases are not only ridiculous and unnecessary. They are also unfair and demoralising. I remember a heated debate taking place in the House of Commons several years ago, when the Government stated categorically that we had the world's best night defence system against air attack. The point was challenged by several Labour members, on the grounds that no Javelins and American F-100D [surely F-86D?—Ed.] Sabres were then in service in this country and that our Meteor and Venom night fighters were inferior to their opposite numbers in America and Russia. This was vigorously denied by the Government spokesman; but no details were given, so the British taxpayer was left to wonder whether in fact the crippling burden of taxation was giving him the value he deserved in air defence, while these "secret" types were sold to countries sympathetic to our likely enemies. On another occasion, the Secretary for Air stated that the The Editor of "Flight" is not necessarily in agreement with the view's expressed by correspondents in these columns. Names and addresses of writers, not for publication in detail, must in all cases accompany letters.
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