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Aviation History
1960
1960 - 2255.PDF
IFLIGHT, 7 October 1960 WISH AIR I960 . . . Arab Republic (Egypt) are: Cairo - Alexandria, twice-daily Vis-count; Cairo - Port Said - Alexandria, thrice-weekly DC-3; Cairo - Alexandria - Mersa Matruh, thrice-weekly DC-3; Cairo - Luxor -Aswan, four times a week with DC-3s; and Cairo - Assiut - Luxor, thrice-weekly DC-3. The Cairo - Alexandria route is the busiest and caters for busi-ness and holiday traffic. The Aswan route is mainly for business traffic in connection with the High Dam; Luxor attracts touristsmainly in the winter; and Mersa Matruh attracts holidaymakers mostly in summer. Under the five-year plan, which dates from1959, El Minya is to be added to the Cairo - Assiut - Luxor - Aswan route and it is hoped that within two years Viscounts willbe operated to a daily schedule. Along the Red Sea coast there are various centres concernedwith oil and industry as well as some resorts, and aerodromes to serve these will be constructed or, in some cases, old wartimeaerodromes will be improved and brought into service. Other aerodromes may be prepared on the Sinai Peninsula, includingone to serve the monastery as a tourist attraction, and service may also be started to Suez. It is planned to serve four oases in the Western Desert. Siwaand Bahariya would be reached by an extension of the route from Mersa Matruh, and Kharga and Dakhla by a route from Assiut.Initial frequency of the oases services would most likely be twice or thrice weekly, and Red Sea services twice weekly.It is expected that 2,000m runways will be provided at all points and this will bring about a need for new aircraft. Misrair wantsturbine powered aircraft for these operations and the Dart Herald or Avro 748 are possible types. Some of these new services could A Misrair Comet calls at Frankfurt probably be operated by Viscounts using low pressure types.There is unquestionably a growing passenger and freight poten- tial and in some cases cargo traffic is already restricted by lack ofcapacity. Development in Egypt is at a rapid rate and the com- pletion of the High Dam is going to accelerate the rate withconsequent increased demand for air travel. Freight rates and passenger fares for domestic services are very low and in fact donot cover operating costs, but the rates are stipulated by the Government and losses to Misrair on domestic services are madegood. This situation is considered necessary for the good of the country at this stage of its development. ARGENTINA'S STATE AIRLINE BY JOHN D. HARBRON THOUGH tightly restricted by the economic stabilizationplan of the democratic regime of Argentina's PresidentArturo Frondizi, Aerolineas Argentinas, the State airline of the Argentine Republic, has made an excellent recovery from thechaos and bad management of the Peron era. The austerity plan makes it almost impossible to replace ageing, hard-working aircrafton high-density domestic routes, or to increase freight charges much above the 2 cents per ton-mile rate. The Peron dictatorship ended five years ago. and AerolineasArgentinas, like all the State enterprises of this new democracy, has not only had to bear the mishandling of that regime but nowhas to conform to the anti-inflationary regulations of the present government which Peron's extravagance made necessary. On theone hand, these prohibit fare increases; on the other, they impose high import surcharges which not only prevent purchases in hardcurrencies, but cut off aircraft replacements at the same time. Today few airlines in the world still using DC-3s on regulardomestic route patterns get as much utilization from their fully depreciated machines as does Argentina's airline. And though thedeficit on operations jumped by 144 per cent between 1958 and last year (devaluation must also be taken into account with thelatter figure), the average overall load factor increased from 64.2 per cent in 1958 to 69.4 per cent last year. Additional to other restrictive factors has been the policy ofliberal post-Peron governments to allow the entry of competitive commercial airlines not only into domestic Argentine services, butalong international routes to key Latin American and United States points on which Aerolineas were once the only Argentineoperators. With high overheads from its prestige-bound but costly inter-national operations (the latest annual report shows a 260 per cent increase in public relations and promotional expenses, primarilyto publicize the Comet 4 New York service introduced in May 1959 and to support necessary but luxurious overseas offices inNew York, Paris and elsewhere), the airline must still face up to competitors who increase their business on money-makingdomestic routes. For example, Brazilian airlines operating into the Argentine increased their percentage of total passenger trafficbetween 1950 and 1958 from 29 per cent to 55 per cent, while An Aerolineas Short Sandringham—one of the few big flying-boats still in service Argentine-owned airlines serving the same cities increased theirpassenger traffic a meagre 1 per cent from 11 per cent to 12 per cent of the total during this eight-year period. Yet today, underthe direction of Brigadier Miguel Moragues (a senior Argentine Air Force officer, and now almost a year in office as president andadministrator general) Aerolineas has made a very commendable and worthwhile advance in efficient operations. Brigadier Moragues and his immediate predecessors havereduced the airline's heterogenous fleet from a wobbly and badly- serviced 84 aircraft at the height of the Peron regime (whose policywas to buy heavily to meet the State airline's requirements, because it would not permit private operators in Argentina) to 38 at theend of 1958. The Buenos Aires' business weekly El Economista noted in its June 18 issue this year that Aerolineas' 38 aircraftperformed 511 million seat-miles in 1958, compared with 172 million in 1949, when it had nearly 90 aircraft. Today Moragues gets high load factors. The four Comet 4s—the last of which entered service in July, to replace the one which crashed near the Asuncion International Airport in June 1959—showed a load factor of 71.83 per cent last year. This figure was exceeded only by the very hard-working C-47s and DC-3s, with1959 figures of 81.3 per cent and 73.7 per cent respectively. Even more noteworthy is the 88.5 per cent load factor of the airline'sfew DC-4s, which operate primarily between Buenos Aires and Cordoba, 600 miles to the west, and Comodore Rivadavia, about1,000 miles south of Buenos Aires. Both areas are the heaviest for regular air freight movements. Cordoba is the manufacturingcentre of Henry and Edgar Kaiser's Argentine car, jeep and aircraft companies, and of a large Fiat tractor-making plant.Comodoro Rivadavia is the chief centre of Argentina's expanding oil refining industry, now being modernized to give the countryself-sufficiency in petroleum by 1962 with the help of private United States loans and equipment, and the assistance of residentAmerican technicians. Everywhere one travels in Argentina, the policy of Aerolineas tomake a good showing is evident. Smart new, if small, airports; helpful employees in ticket and baggage departments; and willingcabin crews; all these are signs of cheerful effort in the face of severe odds. An example noted by the writer on a flight between
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