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Aviation History
1962
1962 - 0645.PDF
FLIGHT 643 International, 26 April 1962 dm SAShave taken delivery of the first of their two Convair 990 Coronados under the terms of the consortium agreement with Swissair, who have five of these aircraft in service or on order with KLM, returned to the Commonwealth air transport fold last year by concluding a pool agreement with BOAC. The terms of this pool, like those of most pool agreements, are complicated; but the broad pattern appears to be as follows. All BOAC services beyond the Persian Gulf are in pool with Qantas and Air-India under the so-called tripartite pool, and are split BOAC, 50i; Qantas, 28; Air-India, 21J. This pool covers BOAC and Qantas services through Ceylon; but because BOAC now operate additional Comet 4 services through Ceylon—actually five per week—between London, Colombo and Singapore, these are covered by a separate pooling agreement with Air Ceylon. BOAC gives Air Ceylon a 20 per cent cut of the revenues (a load factor is probably guaranteed) and then pays into the tripartite pool the other 80 per cent of the revenue plus the charter price which Air Ceylon pays BOAC. This is then divided with Qantas and Air-India according to the agreed tripartite formula; the partner most concerned is, of course, Qantas, who operate services between London and Singapore via Ceylon. Footnote The BOAC/MEA pool agreement, it is now learned, was revised last August in favour of MEA following the severance of the association with BOAC. Previously, the share of the traffic between the UK and the Lebanon was 37J per cent MEA and 62£ per cent BOAC, excluding freight but including European points; the split is now 40 per cent MEA/60 per cent BOAC, including freight but excluding European points. Whereas previously BOAC were paying MEA, now the situation is reversed. The tripartite agreement with Qantas and Air-India has, as reported in Flight International for March 15, page 386, been slightly adjusted at BOAC's expense in favour of Air-India. CUBANA ADRIFT CUBA's state airline, Compania Cubana de Aviacion SA, like most Cuban Government enterprises, appears to be disintegrating as an effective government operation. Not only has it lost 16 pilots in the last eight months (almost all of these have defected during aircraft stop-overs at Gander Airport, on the way to Eastern Europe), but Cubana's modern, British-built aircraft have all but disappeared from normal commercial airline service. Cubana's three Viscount 818s were sold to Mr Leon Perez, recently described by The Toronto Daily Star as a "mysterious international aircraft sales agent." Mr Perez is a director of, and major shareholder in, the UK independent Trans-European Airways. It is said that the Cuban Government required $100,000 security against the expected defection of the Cuban co-pilots who would help fly the Viscounts to the Bahamas and then return home. The aircraft have been delivered to SAA and to Ansett-ANA, on terms reported in Flight International of March 1, page 321, and March 22, page 424. Two of the Cubana pilots successfully deserted in Nassau. The Viscounts, the last in Cubana's fleet, had been used on the short-haul Havana-Miami run which terminated last year and on the longer Havana-Santiago de Cuba domestic service. The three aircraft have already been replaced by Russian Il-14s, which are now restricted to the Havana-Santiago de Cuba service. The whereabouts of all four of Cubana's Britannia 318s, purchased at the close of the Batista regime in late 1958, is less certain. A Canadian back from Cuba in early April identified one of them parked at Havana Airport wearing die markings of CSA, the Czech Communist state airline. According to Czech Government Press despatches reprinted in East Europe magazine of New York, CSA senior officials including Josef Prohavka, the director general of CSA, and his operations manager were in Havana discussing Cubana's future and Czech control of its operations. Following their visit, the most noticeable change in the old route pattern for Cubana's Britannias (apart from the New York- Havana run which has long been terminated) is Havana-Prague with a stop-over at Gander, Newfoundland. Before Castro, Cubana's most lucrative services were to New York for the big American tourist trade, to Madrid to carry Cubans of Spanish origin (of which there were thousands in Havana eager to visit the "old country"), and to Mexico City for the connecting Latin American tourist trade to Cuba. The only big source of dollar revenue left for Cubana now comes from the connecting service between Cubana's Mexico City- Havana service and Canadian Pacific Airlines' nonstop flights from Toronto and Vancouver to Mexico City, which by-pass the United States. In this way, Canadian left-wing and Communist trade union officials and party members now visiting Havana can reach Cuba without changing flights in the United States where they are prohibited entry. Direct Cubana flights into Montreal pick up few tourists or fellow-travellers, but agricultural products such as breeding bulls and baby chicks, sales of which doubled Canada's trade with Castro's Cuba during 1961. At present, however, World Wide Airways Inc of Montreal, which is believed to be operating charters mainly for Cubana, is carrying most of these exports. CSA is also flying one of its four Tu-104As into Havana, on a semi-regular extension of either its Prague-London or Prague- Paris service. These flights are usually reserved for visits of Cuban Government top brass to Eastern Europe and Russia and for Eastern European Communist officials coming to Cuba. The Mexico City-Havana route, the only surviving pre-Castro main run of Cubana, is still doing a bumper business in Latin America, since it is the main route of travel into Cuba for hundreds of would-be pro-Castro revolutionaries now studying in "schools for revolution" in central Cuba. FRIENDSHIPS FOR BAHAMAS AIRWAYS? PLANS for Bahamas Airways, a BOAC associated company, to operate Fairchild Friendships are now in an advanced stage of negotiation. Three aircraft, ex-Avensa, may be lease-purchased from Dupont Aero Finance of Miami for operation on Bahamas Airways' routes between Florida and the Bahamas, and later on the airline's domestic islands routes from Nassau. It is under stood that the company's two Viscounts, which replaced Hermes last July, are to be returned to BOAC Associated Companies. For maximum flexibility of scheduling, maintenance of the Friendships would be carried out in Miami by Airwork Interna tional as well as by Bahamas Airways in Nassau. ARB approval of this arrangement is being sought. It is hoped that Friendship operations will start early this summer. The Bahamas Airways fleet, in addition to the two Viscount 702s, comprises five 30-seat DC-3s, two six-seat Aero Commanders and one Goose. Operation of Friendships by Bahamas Airways (fore cast in Flight for November 9, 1961) would enable the airline to employ a common aircraft type for (1) the highly competitive international services between Florida and the Bahamas and (2) for the services from Nassau to the Out Islands, where most of the airstrips—being unsuitable for Viscounts—are at present served by DC-3s.
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