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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0271.PDF
FLIGHT International, 22 February 1962 273 The first Boeing 707-320H made its initial flight at Renton, Washington, earlier this month. Delivery of the first aircraft, fully certificated, is scheduled for the late spring. This long-range 707 Intercontinental development has been ordered by Pan American, TWA, Lufthansa and Air France MORE POWER FOR THE CAB? IATA's greatest unfriend, as everyone knows, is the US Civil Aeronautics Board. The CAB exercises more power over inter national airline fare-fixing than does any other government authority. To IATA, the CAB is a rather tiresome, interfering busybody, casting its shadow over every fares conference which has to do with services to the USA. This is because the CAB requires PanAm, TWA, etc, to file in advance the position that they propose to take up, and then makes known its opinion as to whether the proposals are in the US public interest. Through the US carriers, therefore, the CAB influences in many ways the course of IATA's fare negotiations, particularly on the North Atlantic. For example, it [was pressure from the CAB that led to the adoption of economy-class fares in 1958; and more recently it is the CAB which appears to be preventing the adoption of so-called ITX fares on the North Atlantic—because it considers the offering of special fares as the basis of inclusive tours to be "discriminatory." Hitherto the CAB's power over IATA has been indirect only— through its power over the US airlines which comprise IATA'S most powerful members. But for many years the CAB has wanted to exercise control over foreign carriers operating into the USA. Congress has never given the CAB such powers, which would clearly threaten to infringe national sovereignties, and the CAB has had to be content with influencing IATA indirectly. Now being studied by the US Senate Aviation Sub-Committee is a Bill which attempts to give the CAB greater authority over inter national air services into the USA. The Bill was introduced last year at the CAB's request and it would give the Board control over all foreign airline rates, fares, and capacity. If this Bill becomes law the CAB will be an even greater unfriend of IATA, and such legislation could provoke all sorts of reprisals from foreign govern ments. MR GRANVILLE'S BRANCKER LECTURE SINCE 1927 the United Kingdom has made outstanding contribu tions to the development of air transport in the dominions, colonial territories and areas of British influence. This was the theme of the nineteenth Brancker Memorial Lecture delivered at the Institute of Transport in London on February 12 by Mr Keith Granville, chairman of BOAC Associated Companies. The greater part of the paper was devoted to a useful history of the subject, and Mr Granville put a number of interesting but not widely known facts on the record. For example, he recalled how Mr George Woods Humphery, managing director of Imperial Airways, negotiated an agreement with the Italian airline SANA, under which the Italian company received £5,000 per annum from Imperial Airways in return for operating rights across the Mediter ranean. "So far as I can ascertain," said Mr Granville, "this was the first major British attempt to influence traffic rights by financial means." The lecturer noted the fact that many of the countries whose air transport Britain has helped to develop have bought British equip ment—for example, the Indians, Egyptians and Sudanese alone have bought Comets and Viscounts worth £14m—while airlines in which British investments have been made since the late twenties have purchased British aircraft to the approximate value of £62m, of which £49m worth is flying today. The airlines which have benefited from UK investment, said Mr Granville, seem to have bought British aircraft consistently. In his opinion, but for this investment, "a great deal of purchasing might well have been elsewhere." None of the airlines which BOAC and its predecessors helped to bring into being, remarked the lecturer, has gone out of business. Many have merged and changed their names but "in each case there remains an airline which has stemmed from the early endeavours." Their profitability record over the years has been no better and cer tainly no worse than that of most airlines which operate in com parable conditions and sparsely populated and, in some cases, comparatively backward territories. In Mr Granville's view it "reflects great credit on the airlines of what used to be known as the British Empire that they have, with very small pickings, been able to keep their companies in being." It is well recognized that any losses had been more than offset by the aid which the air services had given to the development of business and commerce. Referring to BOAC Associated Companies, Mr Granville said there were many reasons for the anticipated 1961-62 loss. Few of the airlines concerned operated the kind of route pattern that could be expected to produce big profits. Against that had to be weighed their value as feeder lines for BOAC trunk routes, and the other political, social and technical advantages of close collaboration with airlines in rapidly developing communities. "These airlines," he said, "are opening up some of the most interesting, some of the most primitive, some of the most promising, and some of the most frus trating areas of the world." In conclusion Mr Granville said he found it difficult to estimate the exact benefits of British airline investment abroad; "but there is little doubt," he said, "that these investments have been more than adequately repaid in terms of extra traffic and successful collabor ation." Perhaps the clearest proof of this was given by "the extremely tidy and efficient business partnerships which now exist between BOAC and the airlines of South Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Australia, India, Ceylon, the British West Indies, Malaya and Hong Kong." It was probably fair to say that the success of these partnerships originated from the "investments and associations that had their beginnings in an age when air transport was an 80-mile-an-hour biplane."
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