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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 0807.PDF
4727 VOLU ME 7 9 THURSDAY 15 JUNE 1961 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H. F. Kl NQ MBE Technical Editor W. T. GU NSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAM8DEN Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE IN THIS ISSUE From All Quarters 818 In the Birthday Honours List 820 Missiles and Space-flight 821 Assault and Fire- power 825 Farnborough on Show 826 Hot Ships at "Heron" 828 A Threesome of Choppers 829 Putting: the Clock Back at Rhinebeck 832 Sport and Business 834 Fifty Years of Finishes 835 BOAC v. Cunard Eagle North Atlantic Case 837 Straight and Level 839 Flight System Survey 84O Air Commerce 841 Correspondence 847 The Industry 848 Service Aviation 849 IliDe Transport Publications Ltd, DorsetHouse, Stamford Street, London, SE1; telephone Waterloo 3333. TelegramsFliahtpres London SE1. Annual sub- scriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas £5.Canada and USA S15.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorized at NewVork, NY. Branch Office* Coventry: 8-10 Corpora-tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham: King Edward House, Newstreet, 2; telephone Midland 7191. Man- chester: 260 Deansgate 3; telephoneWackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow: 62 Buchanan Street Cl; tele-phone Central 1265-6. S*w York, NY: Thomas Skinner & Coli'ubliahers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; I- lephone Digby 9-1197. *• Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd,i.»61. Permission to reproduce illustra- '' 'us and letterpress can be granted onlyiiwier written agreement. Brief extracts '•' comments may be made with duea knowledgement. AIRCRAFT, SPACECRAFT, MISSILES Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 On the Eve of Battle • N our issue of May 18 we suggested that Britain's two biggest independents. • British United Airways and Cunard Eagle Airways, might come together to rationalize their route requirements. Both had lodged with the Air Transport Licensing Board an overlapping series of applications for new European and domestic routes, and it seemed that this internecine contest was about as sensible as two members of the same party fighting for one constituency. We suggested (not without inspiration) that the two inde- pendents should do a swap—Cunard Eagle perhaps exchanging European applications for British United's UK domestic applications. This, broadly speaking, is what the two independents have just done: there is now only slight overlapping of requirements, and each has withdrawn its objections to all of the other's applications, due to come up before the Board next Tuesday, June 20. A more detailed review of the situation appears on page 841. Many, if not all, of the European routes applied for raise economic and political problems, more delicate than those brought up at the recent relatively straightforward Cunard Eagle v. BOAC North Atlantic hearing. In that case there was one applicant, one objector and in effect one route, with no funda- mental disagreement about the adequacy of traffic, and no real doubts about Britain's right to have a second airline on the route. Even so, that hearing lasted 18|hr, over six days. If the 69 applications and 257 objections to be heard at Public Meeting No 21, which begins next Tuesday, are going to be aired in comparable detail, the meeting could be interminable. Obviously, if our Air Transport Licensing Board is to avoid becoming as ponderous as the US Civil Aeronautics Board, the watchword of the parties involved will have to be—keep it brief. To Pool or Not On the eve of this battle, which will affect the destiny of British air transport more than any other previous tussle, it would be wrong to take sides. Whatever the result, however, nothing but good can come of it. Everything for which both the corporations and the independents stand will be tested, challenged and justified—in public. Pooling, which BEA endorses and which the independents might shrewdly repudiate in principle, will be one of the major issues dis- cussed. So will traffic rights. It will become apparent that the future of the independents rests not so much with the Air Transport Licensing Board as with foreign governments. Nothing the Board decides will assuage the pro- tectionist outlook of those countries to which British carriers—corporations and independents alike—wish to operate more air services. And whatever the Board may decide it is the Minister who, through his supreme powers over the disposal of appeals and the negotiation of traffic rights, will always have the final word. It is significant that the Minister never (as he had the power to do on the grounds of diplomatic inexpediency) directed the Board to reject the appli- cations that it is now about to hear. Britain is the biggest generator of air traffic in Europe and the Minister can and must drive very hard bargains with foreign governments on behalf of all Britain's airlines, corporations and independents.
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