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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0669.PDF
18 May 1961 679 AIR COMMERCE BEAs SEVENTH CONSECUTIVE PROFIT A MET profit of "at least £lim" was achieved by BEA in therinancial year ending March 31, 1961. Final figures will notbe available for some time, but the £Iim profit is the figure after payment of interest on all capital. It is BEA's seventh consecutiveannual profit. Though it is less than the 1959-60 record profit of £2m jt is. to quote Lord Douglas, "a creditable result for a year whenprofits throughout the airline industry have declined sharply and great airlines well known for efficiency and profitable operationha\c themselves sunk into the red for the first time in many years." The reduction in profit was largely the result of a fall in overallload factor by 2.5 percentage points to 65.2 per cent. BEA's load ton-miles increased by 19 per cent to 155m, and capacity increasedby 24 per cent. 'With the forthcoming Licensing Board hearings evidently inmind Lord Douglas comments that the disappointing results of the American domestic carriers seemed to be due primarily to wastefulcompetition—and hence low load factors—on many routes. He draws attention also to "another threat to our future profitability,"estimating that the Ministry's new landing fees will increase BEA's expenditure by about £440,000 during the current year; the newtax on kerosine should add another £150,000, and the proposed employment tax a further £140,000. The 1960-61 year was the first in which BEA carried more than4m passengers. Thus BEA is now the fifth largest passenger- carrier in the world, after Eastern (8.9m). American (8.5m),United (8.0m), and TWA (5.2m). In other words, BEA is the world's biggest passenger carrier outside the USA. OZARK AND THE BAC-111 DURING the news conference last week at which Sir GeorgeEdwards of the British Aircraft Corporation announcedBritish United's order for ten BAC-llls. he mentioned also that Ozark Air Lines of St. Louis had given BAC a letter of intent forfive aircraft. Two days later, on May 11. the airline's president, Mr Joseph H. Fitzgerald, spoke of an "order," adding that theBritish Aircraft Corporation had an advantage in manufacturing this type of aircraft as US manufacturers were not making aircraftin the same class. (Sir George Edwards, at the BUA news confer- ence, had said that there was at present no competition, nor anyin view, for the BAC-111.) Ozark is one of 13 US local service airlines, being fifth in termsof revenue passenger miles (nearly 100m in 1960), and fourth in terms of passengers carried (more than 560.000 in 1960). Itoperates a fleet of three F-27s and 24 DC-3s on more than 5,000 miles of routes serving 45 towns and cities in ten mid-westernstates from Minneapolis-St Paul in the north to Nashville in the south and from Sioux City in the west to Louisville in the east.Among the other cities it serves arc—in addition to St Louis— Chicago, Indianapolis and Kansas City. Ozark employs about1.100 people, and in the second half of I960 earned total revenues of S6.3m. Its total operating expenses were S6.08m. Net profitwas about S393.000, compared with about S40.000 in the second half of 1959. The Potez 840 feederliner made its first flight in public at Toulouse - Blagnac on May 9. Powerplant is four Turbomeca Astazou of 442 s.h.p., and seating capacity is 16-24 NOW RADAR SPEED TRAPS? /"•* REATER ability to see and be seen in VMC, to change courseVj with minimum prior notice and to manoeuvre as required by ATC, are the reasons which have prompted the FAA to proposea speed limit on aircraft within 50 miles of their destination airports. Aircraft operating in both instrument and visual conditions, incontrolled and in uncontrolled airspace, would be included in the proposals, but there would be no restriction on aircraft opera-ting at heights greater than 14,500ft. The speed limit is 250kt (288 m.p.h.), but it is recognized that some US military jets may beunable to operate safely at these speeds, in which case they would be required to fly as slowly as possible within their safe operatinglimitations. Radar controllers would presumably have to keep a check on potential air-hogs.One of the advantages of such a limit would be that speed differentials are reduced, simplifying separation in terminal areas.According to the new FAA administrator. Mr "Jccb" Halaby, the Agency is trying to regulate traffic with the minimum restrictionon free movement, but as speed differentials increase, he says, more regulation is inevitable. Only when automatic systems are inoperation may high speed operation be possible in terminal areas. The regulation which the FAA is proposing is not entirely new,since in conditions of reduced visibility within control zones US helicopters arc presently restricted to about 180 m.p.h. A similarlimit has been proposed for aircraft operating in the airport traffic area which it is proposed to set up around all airports equippedwith control towers. This area, five miles radius from the centre of the airport and effective up to a height of 2,000ft. is part of theFAA's plan (see "Partnership of the Skies," Flight. February 24, 1961) to introduce a system of graduated airspace around airports.Under this scheme a traffic area of strictly limited size would extend upwards from ground level around US airports and wouldbe surrounded by "proximity" or "transition" areas beneath which is uncontrolled airspace for use by light aircraft. PRIVATE AND PUBLIC IMAGES WHAT of the "public image" that British United Airways areat present so vigorously projecting of themselves ? Therewas the series of articles in the Brighton Evening Argus,reviewed in Flight for May 4. These may have given the southern English public the impression that BUA is young, vigorous, dyn-amic, energetic, progressive and enterprising, while the corporations are fat old fools—though we wonder whether the articles impressedthe informed public, the Licensing Board and the grey eminences around the Ministry who will decide BUA's bid for a share of thecorporations' business. Then there was British United's order for ten BAC-llls, whichgot a tremendously good Press and which needed no public- relations gloss. And there was the controversial British UnitedPolitical pamphlet of last January, Independent Airlines—The Future, which broke the long hush that had fallen on British air transportduring the formation of the new Board. In February there was a television interview with Mr F. A. Laker, BUA's executive director,m ••• hich he said that the corporations "could do better with a bit °t Mimulus." Certainly BUA's cuttings albums must by now befair-, full. " ieanwhile Cunard Eagle (the extent of whose European appli-a' : ns involves 50 per cent more capacity than those of BUA) arei'-' Gaining an almost complete silence—except for the chairman'sm recent lecture to the SLAE (Flight, April 6), and his interview withFrank Beswick in last week's issue. The announcement of the Boeing 707 order—which was actually placed a couple of monthsago—was brief and belated, perhaps understandably. Cunard arc not oblivious to the feelings of the hapless taxpayer, who is beingasked to contribute half as much to a new Queen liner as Cunard is prepared to pay, out of its own pocket, for two new jet airliners(American ones at that) for the same route. British United's public imagery has perhaps been too negativeand too defensive—anti-corporation rather than a positive pro- motion of British United. It cannot be that BUA hope to make thecorporations look like "fat old fools"; if they do, they would be underestimating the respect that exists for the corporations. Inparticular, they would be misjudging the respect of the man-in-the- street for BEA, which is now the fifth biggest passenger-carrie; inthe world, and the biggest outside the USA—and which has just made a profit for the seventh consecutive year. (BUA do not discusstheir own finances.) Instead of attempting to tarnish corporation public images, BUA might profitably direct their efforts to ex-plaining—in a way that has not yet fully been done—the advan- tages to British air transport of independent and corporationairlines operating routes in parallel. (Concluded on page 683)
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