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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0543.PDF
FLIGHT International, 12 April 1962 541 AIR CO E R C E NEW CHARTER FOR CHARTERS NEEDED FOR more than two years now Cunard Eagle (or Eagle as it was when negotiations began) has been trying to get American CAB permission for transatlantic charter flights. For a long time the company's attempt to obtain a Section 402 foreign air carrier permit authorizing transatlantic charter services was frustrated by the Board's refusal even to hear their application. Now the CAB has refused to approve about 100 Cunard Eagle UK - US charters for the coming summer. The CAB limits "off route" charters to 10 per cent of a carrier's "on route" scheduled mileage to US points. Because Cunard Eagle's scheduled routes into the USA extend only from Bermuda (800 miles) and the Bahamas (200 miles), the number of charters would have been severely restricted—actually to ten on the CAB's reckoning. Cunard Eagle have therefore cancelled their UK-US charter programme for the coming season; and it is said that the British Government has formally notified the US Government that, if the CAB restricts transatlantic charter flights by UK carriers, Britain may have to restrict American charter flights. American carriers participate in the transatlantic charter market as freely as they desire, without any restrictions on the number of flights into Britain. To date about one-half of US carriers' trans atlantic flights have been performed by the supplemental and cargo operators like Flying Tiger and Riddle, who hold certificates for domestic service but not for transatlantic charters. The CAB has authorized these charters without any volume limitation whatso ever and Cunard Eagle have been trying to gain access to the trans atlantic charter market on an equal basis with the US carriers. Last year Cunard Eagle's DC-6s operated about 40 one-way charters and their Britannias about 75. Of these, however, only 15 were allowed direct into the USA under the 10 per cent mileage limitation; the remainder were routed to New York via Montreal— this being possible because Cunard Eagle hold (though do not at die moment implement) a licence for a New York - Montreal service. Presumably Cunard Eagle will still continue to use Montreal as a charter gateway into the USA. Meanwhile US carriers, sched uled and non-scheduled, operate as many charter flights as they like into the UK. The Americans have been waving Section 402 of their Act at British operators; perhaps HMG will now brandish at the Americans Article 68 of the Air Navigation Order. SIR BASIL INSPECTS HIS PRODUCT IN the present BOAC financial year, the corporation intends to limit to 6 per cent the increase in the capacity of its scheduled services. Announcing this in his weekly message to staff in BOAC News, Sir Basil Smallpeice, managing director, adds: "We shall con centrate on getting as much as we can out of our most competitive aircraft, the Comet 4 and the Boeing 707." The corporation will retire "as soon as possible" its DC-7Cs and Britannia 102s. The financial year that has closed is described by Sir Basil as financially "the worst in our history." He does not put a figure on the deficit, but it is believed to be considerably more than the £10m originally forecast. Although BOAC, he says, operates as cheaply as any other major airline, results have been bad "because traffic virtually stopped growing temporarily, for the first time ever, in a year in which we had all put on a lot of new jet capacity." So, to correct the situation, BOAC has decided (1) to restrict for the time being further growth in the services operated and (2) to go "as hard as we can" for further expansion of business and thereby (3) to make the corporation's aircraft earn more by getting them better filled. "When I can manage to get out on one of our routes for a few days," Sir Basil says, "it naturally helps me to get the feel of the market at first hand . .. and it enables me to meet our ground staffs on the way along. Furthermore, it gives me the only opportunity I ever have of being among our flying staff while they are at work and of checking for myself the product all our various efforts culminate in—the service that we offer to the public." To view headquarters management problems from a distance every now and then, he says, helps to get things in perspective. PROBLEMS AT LONDON'S NEW TERMINAL ALTHOUGH the new No 3 passenger building at London Heath row will not be handling all the old London Airport North traffic for another mondi or so, the first few days' experience of handling arrivals as well as departures have proved instructive—and mildly chaotic. On the day after the arrivals section of the new terminal was opened for the first time, a staff member of this journal was met by his family. Their reaction was that the congestion round the relatively small exit from the Customs hall, caused by friends and Main-cabin test of the de Havilland Trident—an illustration from a paper by Mr David Newman, DH's chief aerodynamicist, recently read before the Society of Automotive Engineers in New York. The paper will be reviewed in an early issue.
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