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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 1084.PDF
-<~ international, 16 April 1964 615 (Left) "Lufthansa's Air Bus services . . . begun in April 1963 between Frankfurt and Hamburg, are also said to be proving successful." They are operated with Constellation IO49Gs. (Below, left) "... the Trans-Europ Express (TEE) system was begun in 1957 with the specific aim of competing with air transport in terms of speed and ease and comfort of travel. . ." The picture shows the Paris-Zurich TEE train on the viaduct at Nogent-sur-Seine, between Paris and Troyes HAMBURG BRUSSELS, AMSTERDAM . /DORTMUND Antwerp Xf Dusseldorf / Cologne / . Liege \ / Hanover FRANKFURT Luxembourg Strasbourg1 MUNICH Innsbruck* .Lausanne MARSEILLES The Trans-Europ Express network. Only terminals and major stops are shown in this diagram of air traffic. The TEE scheme has been paralleled by other important, if less spectacular, improvements over much of Europe. Meanwhile the staggering rise in aircraft speeds has not brought about a very significant reduction in journey times, largely for two reasons. First, stage distances in Europe are so short that increases in aircraft speeds do not result in a proportional decrease in flying time, since a large part of the latter is taken up with take- off and landing procedures and the aircraft flies at its maximum cruising speed for only a very short period of the journey. In general the decrease in flying time has only been of real significance on the longer routes, those over 400 miles in length and especially those over 600 miles. Yet more than 75 per cent of capacity on intra-West European services is offered on routes which are shorter than 400 miles. Secondly, we find that because airports are on the outskirts of towns and because procedures for embarkation, baggage and Customs and passport control are all more compli- cated and lengthy than when travelling by train, the ground time on many West European air routes accounts for 65 per cent or more of the total journey time city-centre to city-centre. This is the case on the London - Paris route and on many others. As a result, an increase in aircraft speed which may reduce flying time by 25 per cent or even 50 per cent will lead to an insignificant reduction in total journey time. The consequence of these contrasting developments in air and rail transport has been that the difference between the air and rail journey times has tended to decrease. A comparison of the air and rail times on 50 West European routes in 1953 and 1960 shows that during this period the time differential for city-centre to city centre journeys was reduced on the average by 10 per cent. In other words, the time saved in going by air has become less (table, p.616). Night Travel The railway, despite its longer journey times, does have one important advantage in its ability to use the night hours. The night air traveller does not spend long enough in the aircraft to be able to sleep sufficiently, and when he arrives at his destination in the early hours of the morning he may have difficulty in finding a hotel or even a taxi to take him to one. It is so impractical and inconvenient to travel by air at night that the development of night services has been severely limited despite the introduction of cheap night tourist fares. To all intents and purposes the hours from midnight to 7.00 a.m. are only of limited use to air transport. Rail transport on the other hand can make maximum use of these hours, for a passenger can usually spend a comfortable and restful night in a wagon-lit or a couchette. He may be awakened for passport and Customs control but increasingly this is done at the beginning or the end of the journey or is done by the attendant on behalf of the passenger. Travelling by »ight is attractive since it involves very little loss of time. You merely travel while you sleep. The economic and demographic structure of Europe is such that a considerable number of major towns are within a night's rail journey of each other. The success of promoting night travel can be seen in the considerable increase of first- and second-class sleeper and couchette accommodation on most major routes in recent years. The Cost of Travel While speed remains the main competitive ad- vantage of air transport, its major disadvantage is the relatively high level of air fares. The airlines realizing this have made great efforts to lower the cost of air travel and to make it progressively a medium of mass transport. The development of larger, faster and techni- cally more efficient aircraft has led to a gradual lowering of costs per seat-mile. In such a climate of technical progress the European airlines have tried with some success to stabilize and even lower fares. The most striking step towards this end was the introduction in 1953 of tourist class fares which were in general 20-25 per cent lower than the old standard fares which then became first-class. In addition the scope of special and discount fares has continually been extended. Lord Douglas of Kirtleside in his British Commonwealth Lecture to the Royal Aeronautical Society in November 1961 claimed that in the period 1952 to 1960 the European airlines reduced their fares in real terms, that is in relation to other goods and services, by 25 per cent. Such claims are somewhat misleading, for though air fares have gone down in relation to the cost of most goods and services they have not gone down in relation to the cost of rail travel. If we compare tourist air and second-class rail fares in 1953 and 1960, on the same 50 routes as we used for an examina- tion of journey times, we find that the difference between the two fares was reduced on only 13 of the routes. On the remaining 37 routes the gap between the air and rail fares increased and on more than half of them the increase was greater than 25 per cent. On the 50 routes as a whole the fare differential rose by 15 per cent. Thus between 1953 and 1960 the competitive position of the railway in terms of fares improved and since then fare developments have continued to be unfavourable to air transport. Particularly un- fortunate was the 5 per cent general increase in West European air fares in the autumn of 1961. It is apparent that the railways still enjoy a tremendous fare advantage over the airlines. In contrast, on many routes in the United States, especially in the eastern states, first-class air travel has been cheaper than Pullman rail travel for several years. In Western Europe, however, tourist class is more expensive than first-class rail even when the cost of sleeper accommodation or other supplements is included. In general, the first-class rail fare is about four-fifths of the tourist air fare, while the second-class rail fare is less than half. Regularity and Punctuality The aircraft is still much more affected by bad weather than the train, and despite the considerable technical progress which has been made in recent years in combat- ting climatic difficulties, safety in air transport must still be paid for in a certain irregularity. The passenger whose plans have been upset by delay or diversion or who must wait a long time in order, paradoxically, to travel fast may not always be aware of this. But he is aware of his personal discomfort, of the appointments he has missed and of the fact that he may not have gained any time at all by flying.
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