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Aviation History
1961
1961 - 1884.PDF
998 FLIGHT,\2% December 1961 AIR COMMERCE All Nippon Airways operate three Fokker Friendship 200s and are due to take delivery of a further seven during 1962. This is the first aircraft, which entered service on July 10 last Japan's Domestic Traffic Booms HTHOSE who may have raised their eyebrows at the decision ofJL All Nippon Airways, reported in Flight's November 23 issue, to adopt a medium jet such as the Trident or Boeing 727 for theirdomestic services would probably be surprised at the startling rate of growth of post-war Japanese domestic air transport. Last year,more than ten times as many passengers were carried domestically as in 1952, the first full year of post-war operations. Japan Air Lines began the first domestic services in October 1951,using Martin 2-0-2s and DC-4s leased from and crewed by North- west Orient Airlines. Traffic growth since then has been extremelyhealthy, and the load factors in the table below serve to underline the'shortage of capacity that has probably been felt at peak periods. TABLE I: GROWTH OF JAPANESE DOMESTIC AIR TRANSPORT Year I9S2 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 I960 Passenger* carried 98,735 211.501 273,061 316,111 451,096 555,415 568,857 745,199 1,082,392 Pass-km x 1,000 134.461 173,917 207,794 276,997 334,016 360,402 440,899 — Availableseat-km :•: 1.000 190,591 230,853 295.150 370,796 460,684 563,503 642,919 — Passenger load factor _ 71 75 70 75 73 64 69 — Sources: Aireview magazine, Tokyo, and ICAO Digest of Statistics All Nippon Airways is making itself felt as a competitive forceagainst Japan Air Lines; in August 1960 JAL put DC-7Cs on its domestic trunk routes when All Nippon introduced two Viscount744s leased from Vickers on the Tokyo - Sapporo route; and a year later ANA's Viscount 828s (of which six are on order) and Friendship200s (of which ten are on order) were introduced. All Nippon has already announced its intention of purchasingmore than 25 NAMCO YS-lls, and will thus become the first cus- tomer for Japan's twin-Dart transport, which is due to fly nextMarch and is likely to present a stiff challenge to the three European twin-Dart transports in Asian markets. All Nippon is the biggestoperator concentrating on domestic services only, and was estab- lished in March 1958 through the merger of Far East Airlines andJapan Helicopter Air Transport. Its piston-engined fleet consists of five Convair 440s, four Doves, nine DC-3s, three Herons (leasedfrom JAL), five Bell 47s, one Tri-Pacer and one Autocar. The Ministry of Transportation has divided Japan into sevenareas to prevent excessive competition among the Japanese local service carriers, of whom there are six at present (excluding AllNippon). The largest in terms of type of equipment used is North Japan Koku KK of Sapporo, with a fleet of four Convair 240s,three DC-3s and a Cessna 170B. It is interesting to see from Table 2 how closely traffic figures forthe more important Japanese domestic routes in 1960 (14 years after the first year of post-war air transport) compare with those ofsimilar US domestic routes for the year ended June 30, 1948— 14 years after the US Post Office air mail route awards in theautumn of 1934, which can be regarded as the foundation of present- day US domestic air transport. In the USA, of course, air transportwas operating continuously during those 14 years, while in Japan it ceased with the end of the war in 1945 and was not resumed untilsix years later. So the fact that 1960's Tokyo - Osaka traffic came close to that on the plum New York - Boston route in 1948 (at thattime the latter was consistently ranking first among US domestic routes in passengers carried) is more significant than might be thought, indicating as it does a more rapid rate of traffic growth.Again, the number of passengers carried in 1960 on the Tokyo - Fukuoka route was very similar to the number (93,817) carriedbetween London and Rome that year. And just as the US domestic airlines had to meet fierce com-petition from the railways on such routes as New York - Boston and New York - Chicago, so JAL and All Nippon are meeting—and apparently beating—railway competition, especially on such routes as Tokyo - Sapporo. This is perhaps the more surprising inview of America's higher living standards; the Japanese might, therefore, have preferred to go by train rather than to fly. Thecurrent Anglo-Japanese talks in progress on a renewal of the trade agreement between the two countries and on a longer-term Treatyof Commerce and Navigation seem to offer a good psychological moment for British aircraft manufacturers to intensify their salesefforts in Japanese markets. TABLE 2: I960 TRAFFIC ON IMPORTANT DOMESTIC ROUTES Route Tokyo-Osaka (New York-Bos ton)* Tokyo-Sapporo (New York-Chicago) *Tokyo-Fukuoka (New York-Detroit) * Osaka-Fukuoka(New York-Cleveland) Tokyo-Nagoya (Chicago-St Louis) * Osaka-Takamatsu(Miami-Tampa) Nagoya-Osaka Tokyo-Sendai Distance (st.miles) c400 184 648 724 c700 511 c430418 c200 251 clOO 204 c2IO 255 Passengers carried JAL 375,628 _ 177,851 .92,501 — — — All Nippon 65.145 45.606 74.372 67,285 — 30.179 9,864 9,835 Total 440,773 (SOI, 078) 223,457 (242,298)92,501 (102,144) 74,372(66,354) 67,285 (69,558) 30,179(35,082) 9.864 9,835 Japanese Railways 674,383 24^210 39,565 25,867 239,929 — 21,856 93,493 77,748 [Sources: Aireview magazine, Tokyo; Airline Competition (Gill & Bates). * Year ended June 30, 1948 (estimated totals). Japan's main domestic air routes are experiencing a rapid rate of growth, as is discussed in the article
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