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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 1732.PDF
THURSDAY JUNE 11, 1964 Number 2883 Volume 85 Editor-in-Chief MAURICE A. SMITH OFC Editor H. F. KING MM Technical Editor W. T.QUNSTON Air Transport Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Production Editor ROY CA8EY Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE In this issue World News 952 Air Commerce 955 Airline Efficiency 960 Straightgand Level 965 Sport'and Business 966 Letters 967 Europa<1 (Blue Streak) 969 Visit to Georgia 979 Turin's Exposition 988 Missiles and SpacefliKht 991 Service Aviation 994 Industry International 994a •lift* Transport Publication Ltd., DorsetHouse, Stamford Street, London, 8E1; telephone Waterloo 3333 (Telex 25137).Telegrams Flightpres London Telex. Annual subscriptions: Home £4 15s.Overseas £5 5s. Canada and USA (15.00. Second Class Mail privilege* authorizedat New York, NY. Branch Ofllctt: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora-tion Street; telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham, King Edward House, NewStreet, Birmingham 2; telephone Mid- land 7191. Manchester, 260 Deansgate,Manchester 3; telephone Blaekfrlara 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 123 HopeStreet, Glasgow C2; telephone Central 1266.6. Bristol, 11 Marsh Street, Bristol1; telephone Bristol 21401/2. New York, NY: Thomas Skinner A Co(Publishers) Ltd, 111 Broadway 6; telephone DIgby 9-1197.© lliffe Transport Publications Ltd, 1961. Permission to reproduce illustra-tions and letterpress can be granted only under written agreement. Brief extractsor comments may be made with due acknowledgement. Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club Fint Aeronautical Weekly In the WorM Founded in 1909 Blighted. Blessed . . . SO long as British air transport is composed of two worlds, public andprivate, each having different obligations, it will be difficult to formulate a unified national policy. But for the industry to be as one in its obligations would require either nationalization of the independents or de-nationalization of the corporations. Both these solutions would cause so much adrenalin to flow that they can be dismissed. Mr Stephen Wheat- croft does not even discuss them in his new book, Air Transport Policy, of which we publish a more detailed review on pages 959 and 964. So Britain is blighted and blessed with a dual-obligation industry, and the problem—the opportunity—is how the best of each can serve the nation. The remarkable fact is that the present licensing system, for all the shortcomings so lucidly enumerated in Mr Wheatcroft's book, has not completely failed. The essential Wheatcroft recommendation, which is to put policy- making "squarely on the plate of the Minister," is not, we believe, the answer. Ministers come and Ministers go, and neither politicians nor the Civil Servants who advise them, for all their integrity, are schooled in the professional commercial expertise which is the prerequisite of a success- ful industry. The object should be to diminish, not to increase, the airlines' exposure to politics. There must bs regulation, of course, for the many good reasons enumer- ated by Mr Wheatcroft. But the regulatory machine, i.e. the Air Transport Licensing Board, will not be improved by fitting it with more levers for Ministers to juggle with. Mr Wheatcroft himself has scant regard for Mr Amery's November 1963 White Paper on BO AC; but he would have to suffer more, not less, of such mediocrity if his essential proposal were accepted. . . . and Bemused Appeals against ATLB decisions should be at the ultimate disposal of the Minister of Aviation, because he is responsible to Parliament for the corporations; but the grounds of any appeal should be specifically limited to genuine new evidence and to misinterpretation of points of law by the ATLB. This would eliminate the present re-hearing nonsenses and the undermining of the Board that results. We have always felt, too, that the Board cannot regulate air transport if traffic rights, international fares, mergers, subsidies and so forth are none of its business. The Ministry's functions in these basic matters should be entrusted to the ATLB. Mr Wheatcroft suggests that the Board should be made the authority on international fares, and we agree; but it should also be the authority on traffic rights, on subsidies for social services, on airline mergers and pools, on everything affecting the regula- tion of the industry. We suggested this in 1959 and 1960 when the ATLB was being devised. As Mr Wheatcroft advocates, the ATLB should "conduct its own investigations into the issues involved" rather than passively listening to one side droning boringly on about material diversion and then to the other side droning on in rebuttal. The Board really must develop its own definitions of such abstractions. It should also call for and publish regular traffic and financial statistics so that theie can be no more forensic disputes about, for example, just what the traffic growth and load factors are on a particular route. In short, give the ATLB the levers of power and policy- making.
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