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Aviation History
1968
1968 - 2579.PDF
Official Organ of the Royal Aero Club First Aeronautical Weekly in the World Founded in 190* THURSDAY 14 NOVEMBER 1968 Number 3114 Volume 94 Editor J. M. RAMSDEN Air Transport Editor H. A. TAYLOR Production Editor ROY CASEY Editorial Director MAURICE A. SMITH DFC Managing Director H. N. PRIAULX MBE In this issue World News 7 6 2 Parliament 7 4 4 Air Transport 7*5 Sport and Business 7 7 3 BAC's Big Twin jet 77 7 Books 7 8 I Letters 7 8 2 Special feature: Missiles 1969 7 85 Industry International 8 0 0 Spaceflight 8 0 I Defence 8 0 4 Straight and Level 8 0 6 Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd, DorsetHouse, Stamford Street, London SE1; telephone 01-928 3333. Telegrams/Telex:Flight Iliffepres, 25137 London. Annual subscriptions: Home £8 0s. Overseas£8 for one year; £20 8s for three years. Canada and USA $20 for one year:$51 for three years. Change of address- please note that four weeks' notice isrequired, together with the return of a wrapper bearing the old address.Registered at the General Post Office as a newspaper. Second Class Mail privi-leges authorised at New York, NY. Branch Offices: Coventry, 8-10 Corpora-tion Street: telephone Coventry 25210. Birmingham: 401 Lynton House, WalsallRoad, Birmingham 22b; telephone 021 BIRchfield 4838. Manchester, 260 Deans-gate, Manchester 3: telephone Blackfriars 4412 or Deansgate 3595. Glasgow, 2-3Clairmont Gardens, Glasgow C3; tele- phone 041 332-3792 or 041 332-8006.Bristol, 11 Marsh Street, Bristol 1: telephone Bristol 21491-2.New York: Iliffe NTP Inc, 300 East 42nd Street, New York NY 10017, USA:telephone 867-3900. © Iliffe Transport Publications Ltd1968. Permission to reproduce illustra- tions and letterpress can be granted onlyunder written agreement. Brief extracts or comments may be made with dueacknowledgement. Collapse of an Airline A fine airline like British Eagle does not suddenly close because of higher landing fees, £50 travel restrictions, loss of trooping, or for the other reasons advanced when the shock news was announced last week. Certainly this has been a difficult year; but greater adversities have been defied by Mr Harold Bamberg since he formed Eagle with £150 and a Halifax 20 years ago. The cause lies deeper. It is to be found in the air transport system, which answers "no" to the question "Does Britain want strong private airlines?" BOAC and BEA are the favourites; and though lip-service is paid to the useful role of the independents, they are in reality second-class citizens of the British air transport world. To build a first-class international airline against all the odds, as Bamberg did, was a great achievement. Britain was built by that sort of creative fighting spirit and determination. As recorded on page 767, Eagle's innovating record was unique. It is of course easy to blame "the system." There is something in the argument that Bamberg-style individualism does not always beget the management that becomes necessary when airlines grow big and outstrip the capacity of one man—however brilliant and physically strong—to do everything. Eagle was Bamberg and Bamberg was Eagle, and the company's management structure remained more paternal than corporate until the end. Make private airlines more public Yet if the system had been right the transition from personal to corporate management would have been enforced—as it was in the USA when Howard Hughes and TWA ran into trouble. One of the shortcomings of the British system is its neglect of the need to make private companies more public, requiring them to render full information about their business, in particular full financial data—operating as well as capital. The need for licences is obvious; without them airlines cannot attract investment. But the need for accountability is no less great. It provides not only the raw material on which the whole industry can be planned and financed, and inter-firm comparisons made. It also imposes the disciplines of sound management. The system whereby the Air Transport Licensing Board can be privy to airline books if it wants to be is inadequate. Occasional inspections in private are no substitute for the continuous monitoring of openly published figures of the sort required of US airlines—even charter and taxi companies. The analogy between Harold Bamberg and Howard Hughes is striking. Hughes was TWA and TWA was Hughes until it became obvious, from results for all to see, that the airline was heading for trouble. The US system averted disaster by switching on warning lights. TWA's employees, shareholders and creditors did not suddenly hear that the airline was to cease upon the midnight hour. A few weeks ago the US Civil Aeronautics Board published the 1968 edition of its Air Carriers' Unit Costs. It is full of intimate financial details about every US airline including, as a random example, the price paid by Mohawk for its One-Eleven Speys ($313,000 each). Why does the Board of Trade think the publication of such information would be harmful to British airlines? Its reply is on page 766. The best that can be said of it is that the Board at last appears to recognise the importance of the subject. We are advocating not just another bit of form-filling bureaucracy, but a discipline which will help to avoid another British Eagle fiasco.
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