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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1462.PDF
278 FLIGHT International, 22 August 1963 From Prague International Airport 23 II- 14s, built under licence in Czechoslovakia by Ma, still form the mainstay of internal services. The Cubana Britannia in the foreground has just arrived from Havana Airline Profile / NUMBER NINE IN THE SERIES Czechoslovak Airlines By John Seekings TO the air transport enthusiast a few spare hours could hardly be better spent than wandering around the aeronautical gallery of the Narodni Technical Museum in Prague. Here he would find, set out in the most contemporary idiom, a fascinating exhibition commemorating the fortieth anniversary of Czechoslovakia's State airline. Included among the exhibits is a perfectly preserved Aero 14 Brandenburg, similar to the aircraft which operated the first flight of Ceskoslovenske Statni Aeroliniein the summer of 1923 between Prague and Bratislava. Also on display is the utilitarian uniform provided to the solitary passenger carried on that historic service. However, in one respect the exhibition could be said to be incomplete when viewed through Western eyes, for it fails to disclose the most remarkable feature of CSA: its socialist character. Unlike most airlines of the capitalist world, the activities of CSA cannot be divorced from the planned economy of which it is an integral part. To appreciate, then, the nature of this airline it is necessary for the researcher to go back to the basic blueprint of the national economy, the Five Year Plan. If, for instance, he wishes to understand CSA's rapid current expansion then he has only to consult Article Four of the Third Five Year Plan where he will find that CSA's traffic in 1965 is planned almost to quadruple as com pared with 1960, this being the order of growth which the State Planning Commission estimates as necessary if the country's economic programme is not to be hampered for lack of air trans port. One basic feature of this programme is to further the Communist concept of international specialization of labour by concentrating Czechoslovakia's current economic effort on engineering in the widest sense. This most obviously calls for an accelerated pro gramme of industrialization—a trend in which CSA's internal services play an obvious part. It also calls for a SO per cent expan sion of foreign trade, mostly between states within the Communist bloc (which by 1965 will account for three-quarters of Czecho slovakia's foreign trade) but also with the West, particularly the undeveloped territories. It is trends such as these which provide the basis of CSA's international development. Another basic feature of the Third Five Year Plan is a gradual move away from the extreme centralization which characterized the reconstruction period covered by the First and Second Plans. This trend is being accompanied by a determined effort to promote the relatively undeveloped economy of the country's eastern region, Slovakia. Both trends place obvious additional demands on the internal air network. To ensure that each sector plays its proper part in implementing the Five Year Plan, the State Planning Commission also draws up annual plans which set out detailed output targets and investment budgets. In Western language this means that the policy of each State enterprise is decided at Ministerial level. In the case of CSA the share of the route network and the procurement of aircraft— to take probably the two most important aspects of policy—are tne responsibility of the Transport Ministry, the function of manage ment being to implement this policy in the most efficient way. to practice, of course, this dichotomy is less rigid than appears on paper, for the Ministry in deciding on policy will lean heavily on the expertise of the airline's senior staff. Nevertheless the simple fact remains that CSA—unlike most of its Western counterparts—is essentially an instrument of national economic policy. In the international sphere this is clearly evident from the pattern of external services that has developed in the post-war period. In the early post-war years CSA's services were restricted to routes linking Czechoslovakia to the other European countries in the Communist bloc. Prohibition of flights over West Germany and lack of long-haul aircraft effectively prevented the airline from spreading its wings further until the spring of 1958 when the occasion of the World Exhibition provided an opportunity f°r
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