FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1596.PDF
408 FLIGHT International, 29 August l%i Letters The Editor of" Flight International" is not necessarily in agreement with the views expressed by correspondents in these columns. Names and addresses of writers, not for publication in detail, must in all cases accompany letters. Brief letters will have a better chance of early publication. How Big is the Gap? Sm,—To those interested in airport finance, the appearance in your pages of an article by Mr Marchault is always welcome. His latest contributions—in the issues of July 4 and August 8—blow a breath of characteristically fresh air on a subject which suffers from much misconception. However, in two respects the figures he produces call for comment. Most noticeably, the value he sets for airport subsidy does appear to be very much inflated. In the first place he appears to have accepted the IATA estimate of user charges in 1960 and 1961 as the basis for his own estimate of £78m for 1962. Had he relied on a less biassed body (ICAO, for his information) it seems that he would have come up with a figure in the region of £60m. In the second place his calculations ignore the substantial revenue earned by airports in ways other than landing fees and en route charges. Finally his cost figures are much exaggerated as they show not operating costs but annual investment. When this investment is appropriately amortized (and that does not necessarily mean the methods actually adopted by airport authorities such as the MoA), it appears that the actual costs of running the Western World's airport system is of the order of £200m a year rather than the £800m put forward by Mr Marchault. Taking these three factors together, the hidden subsidy received by airlines from airports must be nearer £100m than £700m. The second comment refers to a matter of omission rather than commission: the extent to which the airport subsidy is spread evenly among the airlines. My rough calculations, based on Mr Marchault's tables, ICAO airport tariffs and the ICAO digest of airline finances, suggest that the amount paid by airlines appears to be rather less than would be expected from the published scale of charges. This can only mean that many airlines are getting away with various forms of concealed rebates. Unfortunately, as very few airports publish detailed accounts, this matter can only be the subject of surmise. A related topic that is similarly ob&CUre is the effect on individual airline's results of the wide divergence in user charges shown by Mr Marchault, particularly in the article under the heading "Cost Plus." It must be obvious, to take four important cases, that airlines using airports in Belgium, Germany, Lebanon and Switzer land are getting facilities at prices which are "much too low to produce a fair return." Equally obvious is the fact that the local operator, as the airline which almost certainly makes the greatest use of these cheap facilities must enjoy a significant advantage over rivals who happen to be based in territories where airport authorities are less generous. Here indeed is a worthy task for Mr Marchault and his computer: to measure the extent to which airline finances are distorted by arbitrary airport charges. London SW3 JOHN FINDLEHURST We get prosecuted. And fined sums tenfold those for comparable motoring offences. We get prosecuted with implacable hostility. Recently five members of the Tiger Club were fined, with costs, a total of £485 10s for flying Permit-to-Fly aircraft over a congested area (whatever that is) and below 500ft. Costs and expenses associated with their defence amounted to another £1,000. We get no aerodromes. If we use MoA aerodromes for big aeroplanes we get (with the marked exception of Gatwick, Britain's friendliest airport) stuffy condescension. I have heard a controller tell a light-aircraft pilot, at five past six on a fine summer evening, that the aerodrome was closed and he could not take off until the next morning. The pilot, a braver man than I, suggested the controller look the other way because he was going anyway. Highly qualified doctors who might be out healing the sick are employed to examine us to find reasons why we should not be allowed to fly. It is now twenty years since Douglas Bader proved that whatever it is which determines whether a man can fly it isn't doctors. We get control zones which bear the smallest relation to the traffic patterns of the airports they are designed to protect, yet contrive to cause the maximum restriction to other, lesser fields. We get airways laid out down to alti tudes the airliners deserted generations ago (airliner genera tions, that is). They don't fly themselves. How often does an MoA man (other than an officer of the Civil Aviation Constabulary) visit your club? How many MoA officials have ever been active pilots, let alone are active now ? Why, when we go abroad, should we have to pay for the indignity of Customs examination ? If They want to assure themselves we haven't done anything wicked like buying something while abroad, why can't They pay their own expenses ? What do They do with our money ? They build, and run at a loss, expensive airports. They start and leave unfinished expensive schemes for rockets, or jets, or things. They all get pensions, too. What can we do? Squat in silent protest on the deserted tarmac at Croydon Airport? Arise in Bastille-storming frenzy and sack Their offices, overturning all the teacups and emptying all the files on the traffic wardens down below? Alas, we should make a poor mob; there are more of Them than there are pilot si There is nothing we can do. The dead hand of officialdom is omnipotent, as powerful as the wind, as unfeeling as the grave. London W14 JAMES GILBERT USSR-US Moon Assault SIR,—The current idea of a combined Soviet-American assault on the Moon seems at first sight to be admirable. However, with the majority of the Apollo project con tracts let and initial production started, surely the Americans, who recently have been questioning the vast space expendi ture of the Kennedy Administration, cannot afford to start altering, and perhaps even scrapping, some parts of their lunar landing programme as would be inevitable were they and Russia to make a truly "joint" attempt. Therefore is not the plan doomed to fail by being con ceived too late in the day? Chislehurst, Kent DAVID HOWARD Private Pilot's Lament SIR,—Near where I work is a fat modern block of offices. Notices forbid entry without passes: uniformed officials throng the entrance to enforce this Orwellian 1984 secrecy. An equally fat car park provides free parking for the build ing's lemming-horde of motor-cars—an oasis of security in a bleak desert of traffic wardens. From the open windows of subsidized canteens waft rich smells of lunch. We pay for this—you and I—for it is one of the Ministry of Aviation's Holborn palaces. You and I fly, too. What do we get for our money? FORTHCOMING EVENTS Aug 24-31 Aviation Union of Yugoslavia: International parachut ing competition, Portoroz. Sept 4 American Embassy, London :Films on Space Research. Sept 4 Kronfeld Club: "Friendly Seven." Sept 7-15 Aeronautical Exhibition, Cristoforo Colombo Airport, Genoa. Sept 8 Private Flying Association and Tiger Club: Rally, Rochester. Sept 11 Kronfeld Club: "Artists Travels with the FAR to the Far East," by David Shepherd. Sept 25 Kronfeld Club: Talk by Wg Cdr G. H. "Buster" Briggs.
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
