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Aviation History
1963
1963 - 1788.PDF
FLIGHT International, 10 October 1963 ^ AIR C SIR WILLIAM EACH year IATA's director-general, Sir William Hildred, presents his report to the annual general meeting. The report he presented to the delegates in the Palazzo dei Congressi in Rome last Monday was perhaps the most difficult he has had to prepare, coming as it did at the end of a year in which IATA has been more scathingly criticized than ever before. Sir William did not gloss over the unpleasant events that followed Chandler though, most uncharacteristically, he does not counter or specifically comment on the criticisms. These, implicit in the official government com munique which followed the 22-governmental conference in Ottawa in July, are (1) that IATA should make available to governments "meaningful information" about its fares conferences; (2) should make available its agreements on fares to the public; (3) should inform governments about enforcement decisions; and (4) should confine the unanimity voting rule to airlines with a "significant economic interest" in the fare at issue. In his report Sir William sets out these Ottawa recommendations (which of course were largely inspired by the public-interest- conscious CAB). The imptied criticisms are unprecedented; yet Sir William, traditionally IATA's chief defence counsel, makes only mild and rather oblique comment. For example: "IATA cannot be charged with responsibility for the soundness or feasibility of proposals by its individual members to the traffic conferences. IATA cannot be the guardian of either international commitments outside the province of IATA or local laws or policies whose controlling force would override traffic conference agreements. It is necessary, therefore, that the accredited traffic conference representatives must ensure that their proposals will not encounter government disapprovals, conditions or reservations seriously damaging to the integrity of Conference Agreements. Moreover, all members are equally entitled to rely upon each other for forth right and complete resolution of differences in the conference procedures—without deliberate mental reservations contemplating subsequent modification through government action." Sir William adds: "It is my fervent hope that the lessons learned from these [post Chandler] experiences include a better appreciation of the responsibilities imposed upon IATA members in traffic conference negotiations and sympathetic understanding by interested governments of IATA's functions, complexities and the validity of its accomplishments." Sir William, as usual, talks with sound commonsense about the supersonic airliner. He does not say much: indeed, he can only reiterate and keep on reiterating that "the airlines have made it clear that supersonic operating costs must be comparable with those of the best subsonic jets available at the time of their intro duction." Again: "I must strongly urge the airlines to be extremely cautious in not flooding the air routes with excess capacity again. We are still struggling to overcome the financial burdens that ex cess capacity has wrought through the advent of the jet. It would <* ridiculous for the industry to go through the same or worse *8ain.,.. itis therefore obvious that extreme care must be exercized to ensure the orderly phasing in of this new equipment.. .. We cat mot stand in the way of progress but the current generations of Ver >' good subsonic jets must be allowed to work out their useful "Pan of life " Sir William is worried about the big expansion of charter traffic. learly he has to be careful what he says here because he could 597 O M M E R C E REPORTS easily come close to suggesting that the public ought not to travel by the cheapest possible fare. What he does say is this: "I have been most concerned about the very large increases in charter traffic On the North Atlantic route IATA members' charter passengers increased by 53 per cent to 256,000 in 1961; in 1962 the increase was 23 per cent, when 315,000 passengers were carried." At this rate, he feels, the charter total on the North Atlantic this year may be nearly half a million—there were enough charter passengers last year, he says, to increase the economy-class load factor by seven points. Sir William does not offer a solution, unless this lies in his plea elsewhere in the report for "drastically reduced fares." He just says that IATA's traffic advisory committee has established a special working group to study charters. Sir William's speech was written before the Ministry of Aviation announced increases in user charges to a shocked airline industry. This, however, is what he said: "At least certain governments are now willing to consult with carriers before imposing new or increased charges. In some cases they have even sought IATA's and the airlines' advice and help in formulating their policies. If IATA's only achievement in this field has been to bring about this change of attitude on the part of certain governments, the efforts have been worthwhile." He hoped that a current study of the problem sponsored by ICAO would improve the situation, and he spoke in favour of passenger service charges (which the MoA proposes to abolish). Sir William may be expected to be quite rude about the Ministry of Aviation during the course of the current Rome meeting. Other points from Sir William's report: (1) "The main respons ibility of the IATA Containers Board is to examine applications for the registration of unit load devices, taking into consideration such matters as design and construction. The Board will also attend to the problems of standardization of containers and pallets, and interchange with other means of transport. So far not enough is known about this new Containers Board and I draw specific attention to it." (2) Out of a total of $2,895m US tourist spending in 1962, $118m—the highest—was spent in Italy and $112m in the UK and France. (3) Talking about the cost of fighting one's way out of an hotel, Sir William said: "Headwaiters, porters, head- porters, chambermaids, liftmen, ubiquitous door boys, commis sionaires in white gloves and smiles like benevolent tigers flood the foyer to speed the parting guest and hypnotize him into forgetting that there is already 15 per cent or 18 per cent on his bill to take care of them." (4) Whilst the IATA operating loss in 1962 is estimated to be about $220m, the net loss, after payment of interest, etc, probably "leaves the industry in the red by about $195m in 1962" and "this is not good." (5) "Criticism is a good thing and we welcome it.... Occasionally it comes from within. I had a letter from a senior executive of one of our member airlines recently which I have circulated to members of the IATA Executive Com-
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