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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 0478.PDF
478 FLIGHT, 8 April l%o AIRLINES THE DOMESTIC SCENE . . . must be expected that—although such a journey now by road orrail is a considerable undertaking—the successful operation of an air service such as this must remain a long-term ideal until thedemand for internal air travel has greatly increased. Fourteen airlines operate UK services, including a recentaddition to the ranks—North-South—not shown in the 1959 break- down on this page. The "cheeses" illustrate the relative capacityofiFered in February and August 1959 and the shares contributed to the total by individual airlines. BEA's share was 92 per centin the winter and 72 per cent in the summer: a measure of the number of all-the-year-round services which are operated by thecorporation. Of the independents, BKS, Jersey Airlines and Silver City each offer more than twice the seat miles of their closest rivaland between them they do substantially more business than all the other independent airlines put together. But the two leaders are close rivals, each offering nearly5 million available seat miles in the summer and each experi- encing a fall-off in business to a tenth of this in the winter.Silver City do almost the same amount of summer business on their Blackpool and Isle of Man - based network, but a high pro-portion of this is holiday traffic and their summer to winter scheduled capacity ratio is about 70 : 1. Only one carrier in1959 offered the same scheduled capacity throughout the year: Starways' 432 seats per week on its businessman's route betweenLondon and Liverpool (though seasonal scheduled services are to be operated in 1960). In contrast to BEA's summer-to-winter ratio of 3 : 1 in 1959,the ratio over the months of February to August last year for other operators was: Morton, 12:1; Cambrian, 8:1; andDerby Airways, 14 : 1. For all the others, it was infinity— Channel Airways, Scottish, Transair, Eagle and Don Everalloperated no scheduled domestic services in the winter of 1958-59. A recurring theme in the studies for preparation of this articlehas been frustration at the inadequacy of information; through ICAO and IATA statistics, UK independent international trafficis better documented than domestic services are at home. A Relative shares in domestic air transport, based on capacity offered. 1, BKS; 2, Jersey'; 3, Silver City; 4, Cambrian; 5, Derby; 6, Channel; 7, Scottish; 8, Transair; 9, Star'- ways; 10, Morton; 11, Eagle; 12, Don Everall breakdown of the independents' domestic scheduled traffic issimply not published. While summer and winter timetables will, for example, distinguish between routes for which licences areheld and those which are actually operated (and this discrepancy is a major one, since independent airlines hold routes in reserve)it is still a poor guide to the capacity actually offered. It has been the quite justifiable practice of independents to depart fromtimetable in order to secure full loads, and a wide measure of capacity leeway is provided by specifying in the timetable anyof a number of aircraft types to operate one service. Typically these might range from Dove to Bristol 170. But apart from timetables there is no other published informa-tion which will give an individual measure of the independents' domestic capacity. Monthly collective statistics are published bythe Ministry of Aviation for "Private companies operating in association with BEA and BOAC" but these never give individualfigures; the Ministry may not divulge them and the independents keep them secret. Fares An absorbing aspect of Britain's internal air services isthe manner in which the cost of an aeroplane journey varies with distance. The graph of revenue rates on this page shows less thepattern of revenue rates (although an attempt has been made to do this) than the lack of it.BEA's domestic fares are not controlled by statute or by local authority, although the approval of the Minister of Aviation issought whenever a change is made. An influence is also exerted by local Advisory Councils in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Walesand the Channel Islands and by the Airports Board in the Isle of Man; and although these bodies cannot by law enforce orrefuse a change of fare, their wishes in practice carry considerable weight. (A curious point is that the chairmen of three councils areboard members of BEA.) There is, naturally enough, very link comment by the councils when the fare trend is downwards, but anincrease in fare must be justified to them by BEA. In general, and although the councils may complain to the Minister if theyconsider that a new fare is too high, it is left to the corporation ana the councils to come to an agreement which the Minister willendorse. One reason for some anomalies in the fare structure existingtoday—as is well explained in a paper recently read to the Institute of Transport by Dr J. L. Grumbridge, BEA's general manager(commercial)—is that the corporation inherited the fare structure as it was in 1947 when domestic routes were taken over. Manyfares have since been rationalized but, as fares "are still basically designed to optimize the cost/ revenue position on a route orgroup of routes," rates per mile and the types of fare available vary substantially. It is BEA's view that a reasonable amount of Left, Britain's five busiest airports. Jersey shows the greatest summer-to-winter variation, Glasgow the least. Right, a quick look at domestic fares LONDON AIRPORT DERBY BEA OVERALL AVERAGE '. REVENUE RATE . MANCHESTER RINGWAY; JAN "&1AP A»1«T JUt. JU *JC SEP 0C7 NOV KC Ml HtHtH APKMAV JUN JU. *UC SEP OCT NOV DEC BRITISH RAILWAYS (SECOND CLASS BRITISH RAILWAYS MONTHLY SE ASOM
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