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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 0381.PDF
238 FLIGHT International, 13 February 1964 AIR COM M ERCE . . . The second Hawker Siddeley 748 is now on a sales tour of South America. On the left, Senor Rubem M. Berta, president ofVARIG, is seen boarding the aircraft at Rio de Janeiro watched by Avro Whitworth Division sales manager Emanual Galitzine (left) and Mr K. Edgerton, chief performance engineer. On its way to South America G-ARAY called at Sept lies Airport Quebec (above) where the temperature was a good few degrees less than at the rough jungle strip at Imbaimadai in British Guiana (below) NAIROBI UNDERSHOOT ON February 3 a London-bound BOAC Comet 4 from Salisbury carrying 62 passengers and a crew of seven touched down in the game reserve nine miles short of the runway during a night approach to Nairobi Airport. Nobody was hurt, but as is usual following a serious incident Capt A. Woolcott and his crew were suspended from further operations pending an investigation. A BOAC spokesman last week said that the aircraft concerned— G-APDL—was given a heavy landing check and found to be undamaged. The aircraft was then flown to London for more detailed examination and is now once more in service. The Direc- torate of Civil Aviation in Nairobi and BOAC are investigating the incident. FUTURE OF AIR UNION IN October 1962, when President de Gaulle gave Air Union his blessing, hopes were high that the original vision of this European airline consortium, which had faded sadly, might be realized. The ultimate dream of 1958, inspired by the European Common Market, was for a completely integrated, multi-national airline like SAS, each country snaring production on a predetermined basis. The shares to be reached when combined capacity had grown to 2,400m tonne-kilometres—possibly by 1972—were to be: Air France, 34 per cent; Alitalia, 26 per cent; Lufthansa, 30 per cent; and Sabena, 10 per cent. Unfortunately, the advance of Air Union was checked by the very thing that it was trying itself to check, namely nationalism. The Italians and Germans were expanding at a higher rate than their partners and were demanding larger slices of the cake. At the same time they seemed increasingly concerned lest the concept of "L'Europe, c'est moi" was becoming a case of "UAir Union, Jest Air France." These worries were much diminished by President de Gaulle's blessing in the autumn of 1962, but virtually no progress has since been made, probably because of French insistence on an overlord political authority. In Brussels on January 21, the civil aviation administrators of the four countries met for what seems like a last attempt to breathe new life into Air Union. According to reports, the representatives of the Netherlands (KLM) and Luxembourg (Luxair) were also present. The result of this meeting was the setting up of three committees to prepare studies for submission on March 20 to the full meeting of the EEC Common Market countries in Brussels. These three committees are, according to Interavia, studying: (1) legal aspects of Air Union status, i.e., whether it is to be a Govern- ment agreement, a company agreement or a mixture of the two; and also traffic rights; (2) financial and Customs; (3) traffic shares, equipment and financial arrangements. All these matters have, of course, been discussed in detail many times since 1959 at airline and Government levels, and all concerned must obviously now take action to produce less air and more union. One thing is certain: in whatever form Air Union emerges, if it emerges at all, it will not be as the unified European airline which was its inspiration five years ago. When Lord Douglas of BEA was asked three years ago whether he was worried about Air Union, he imperturbably replied: "Not really. They're fighting like a nest of Kilkenny cats." Now they are not so much fighting, it seems, as building their own nests. Footnote The four Air Union members are among the most heavily subsidized airlines in the world, as is apparent from a study of the recently published ICAO Digest of Statistics (no. 101 Financial) for 1962. This shows that in 1962 the four governments concerned paid out a total of nearly £16m to cover losses, as follows: Air France, £8m (nearly double the 1961 subsidy); Luft- hansa, £4.1m; Sabena, £3.3m; Alitalia £O.37m. The Dutch would- be member KLM does not receive a subsidy. TRANSATLANTIC TRAFFIC IN 1963 OVER 2.8m passengers were carried in 1963 by the 19 IATA airlines on their scheduled and charter flights across the North Atlantic and Polar routes between Europe and North America. Although this represented a 9.6 per cent traffic growth over 1962, the overall load factor fell 2.2 points to 49.1 per cent, the biggest increase in capacity being 14 per cent in the number of economy- class seats offered. The trend away from first-class travel continued, although the capacity offered actually increased slightly. Charter traffic recorded the biggest increase in transatlantic business during 1963: more than 414,000 passengers were carried on these services—a 31.4 per cent increase over 1962. Air cargo tonnage went up 13.2 per cent.
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