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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 0509.PDF
THURSDAY APRIL 11, 1963 Number 2822 Volume 83 —-— Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 1909 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH DFC Editor H. F. KING MBE Technical Editor W.T.GU NSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Production Editor ROY CASEY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE In this issue World News 488 Air Commerce 490 VTOL Analysis 494 Missiles and Spaceflight 497 Industry International 502 Straight and Level 604 Special Feature: World Airline Survey 505 Sport and Business 549 Letters 550 Service Aviation 552 lliffe Transport Publications Ltd, Dorset HouBe, Stamford Street, London, SB1; telephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137). Telegrams Flightpres London Telex. Annuf.l subscriptions: Home £4 15s. Overseas £5. Canada and USA 15.00. Second Class Mail privileges authorized at New York, NY. Branch Offices: Coventry. 8-10 Corpora tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, King Edward House, New Street, Birmingham 2; telephone Mid land 7191. Manchester, 260 Deansgate, Manchester 3 ; telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 62 Bucha nan Street, Glasgow CI ; telephone Central 1265-6. New York, NY : Thomas Skinner <fe Co (Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone Digby 9-1197. © Dlffe Transport Publications Ltd, 1963. Permission to reproduce illustra tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with due acknowledgement. Transportation . . . IN spite of mergers in the airline industry and the trend towards sheer size, and in spite of a large number of independent carriers having gone out of business (often through lack both of capital and the stability so necessary to forward planning), the number of carriers in this year's Flight International World Airlines Survey is once again larger than in the previous year. Just how many airlines are there in the world? Altogether there are probably as many as three thousand. Even in this issue—which we believe to be the most complete compilation of its kind ever offered by an avia tion journal—we have had to be selective. There are, for instance, no fewer than 15 operators in Bolivia additional to the ones we list; and there are dozens more than we have space to describe in such countries as Canada, Australia and South Africa. Numerically, of course, the small men predominate. Some of our in formation has come from companies with a work-force of less than half a dozen people; and, besides carrying for hire and reward, outback opera tors undertake such tasks as whale spotting, fish cultivation from the air, ice reconnaissance, aerial ambulance work and powerline patrol. ... is Civilization Rudyard Kipling's dictum that transportation is civilization has lost none of its validity. Yet just as there are many people in less-developed territories who took to the air before they ever rode in a train, so even more people in well-developed territories continue to use surface transport because they cannot afford air travel. Air fares are still not low enough, although some interesting trends are evident. In particular, Brazil's domestic fare structure (in which fares are related to aircraft type, with first, second and third-class tariffs for propeller machines and a de luxe level for jet travel) seems an eminently logical solu tion that might have far wider applications, for instance to the North Atlantic, or perhaps to Britain's domestic routes. A similar principle has been applied in Algeria and the Philippines; and Ansett-ANA's operation of 36-passenger DC-3s on Victorian Air Coach services—at increased frequencies, lower fares and with the minimum of cabin service—is another interesting example of how to make the most of obsolescent equipment. But progress is gradual, and there are still too few carriers who really believe in low fares. Suggest fare reductions to them and they will groan. Such fares, they say, will dilute revenues without necessarily producing suf ficient extra traffic to make them economic; break-even load factors will be pushed up, and the extra business will cost more to handle. Mr W. A. Patterson of United Air Lines has said that there is no such thing as a mass air-travel market and that the airline industry is quite unlike other industries. But equally there is no such thing as a mass expense-account market, and air transport will not progress economically if it preens itself on its exclusiveness.
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