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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0043.PDF
FLIGHT International, 10 January 1963 39 AIR CO E R C E Mr Bamberg and Eagle N EWS that Mr Harold Bamberg has resigned from Cunard Steam-Ship Co, Cunard White Star and BOAC-Cunard answers many questions about the man himself and poses many more about the future of Cunard Eagle—or Eagle as it may soon again become. When, in July 1960, Cunard Steam-Ship Co bought Eagle Airways from Mr Bamberg for an undisclosed sum—possibly £lm—this lively inde pendent airline was independent no longer. Mr Bamberg surrendered autonomy believing that, in return, he would achieve the financial sta bility that he and all independents had always found so hard to achieve. Prospects were bright; the new Licensing Act, with its promise of more cake and fewer crumbs for the independents, led Cunard Eagle—backed by Cunard with an order for two Boeings —to apply for a North Atlantic route. Cunard, their Atlantic sea traffic falling, were joining what they could not beat. Cunard Eagle got their licence from the ATLB, only to have it thrown out by the Minister on the appeal of BOAC. Mr Bam berg and his team were nevertheless supported by their parent company in their determination to go through with delivery of the Boeings and to put them on the existing mid-Atlantic route. They did so in May last year. This led directly to the deal between BOAC and Cunard, and to the sudden extinction of half Cunard Eagle's business and of its well entrenched commercial bridgeheads in Bermuda and the Bahamas. The fact that Mr Bamberg accepted a place on the board of BOAC-Cunard led many people to imagine that he was a willing party to the deal. In fact he never was; if he was not actually bitter at the outcome of his partnership with Cunard he had every reason to be. But he was no longer the master of his own destiny; and loyalty to his staff and to Cunard was the paramount reason for his reluctant acceptance of a seat on the board of BOAC-Cunard. Now he has resigned that post, not because Cunard is linked with a Government airline but because of the basis of the agreement. In his own words: "I was, and am convinced, that the proper thing to have done was to have had BOAC-Cunard as a holding com pany and to have let Cunard Eagle and BOAC operate side by side in the western hemisphere so that it would have been possible to get an operating yardstick for BOAC's efficiency. But as Cunard's only aviation expert involved I was overruled." With Mr Bamberg goes his fellow Cunard Eagle director Mr Norman Ashton Hill, leaving BOAC-Cunard's board, in the air transport sense, 100 per cent BOAC. But even more significant is Mr Bamberg's resignation of his Cunard directorships. This will give him the freedom to shape the destiny of what is left of Cunard Eagle—assuming, as is almost certain, that Cunard no longer has any wish to retain its air trans port property. Mr Bamberg's big battle now will be to preserve the identity, and if possible the independence, of his airline and the first-rate men like Guinane, Hodgson, Peacock and Sauvage who have helped to make it what it is over the years. As was suggested in these pages last June, when BOAC-Cunard was formed, Mr Bamberg's biggest battle will be to prevent what remains of the company—namely, European scheduled and inclu sive-tour services (with the new licences won last year for European and domestic routes) and trooping—from going to BUA. Assuming that Mr Bamberg wants to have a go with a new Eagle —and his past record suggests that he will—massive financial backing will be needed. But given the luck and Ministerial encouragement that every airline needs, instead of what has seemed to be active discouragement, the uniquely enterprising Eagle should prove a good investment. Test fleet in being: photographed in Vickers-Armstrongs' flight hangar at Wisley during the Christmas holiday are the three VCIOs —the company's G-ARTA and BOAC's G-ARVA and G-ARVB—which are undergoing a flight-test programme totalling l,400hr. On December 21, when -VB made its first flight, all three happened to be airborne simultaneously. The year-end test-flying total was I90hr
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