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Aviation History
1969
1969 - 1313.PDF
124 AIR TRANSPORT. 707s FOR LAKER THE two ex-Qantas Boeing 707-138Bs which were operated by British Eagle until ceasing operations last November are to go to Laker Airways. They will be the subject of a six-year lease from Robert Benson (Lonsdale) & Co. an associated company of Kleinwort Benson and the owners of the aircraft. Laker Airways has also announced that the profit for the finan cial year ending next March is likely to exceed the forecast figure of £127,000. The airline carried 232,646 passengers in 1968. an increase of 78 per cent on the previous year. EAGLE EX-EMPLOYEES START AGAIN SOME former staff of British Eagle have formed a new company. Phoenix Airways (Liverpool) Ltd, and have applied to the Board of Trade for an air operator's certificate. Operations are due to begin in April with one Skyvan. with a second to follow about three months later. The company plans a charter operation initially, with emphasis on the carriage of cargo. The chairman is Mr Malcolm Kingston, a Liverpool businessman, and the managing director is Mr R. J. K. Spurrell. The chief pilot is Capt K. J. Goodwin. "In America." said Mr Spurrell last week, "air freight transportation for short hops, using STOL aircraft, is a most important sector of the air transport business. In Europe this type of business is growing fast." The company will be based at Liverpool. TRADEWIND: NO PUFF THE close-down of Transglobe Airways was described as "very precipitate and quite peculiar" by the president of Seaboard World Airlines, Mr Richard M. Jackson, in London last week. He was speaking at a press conference at which, it had been widely supposed, he would announce the setting up of Tradewind, a new airline which would in effect continue the Transglobe operation. Transglobe was leasing the six CL-44s owned by Seaboard, and had taken delivery of four of them. Mr Jackson made it clear that, although Seaboard would welcome the inauguration of such an airline in order to get its CL-44s flying again, none of the interests approached had yet made a suitable proposal for doing so. Transglobe. said Mr Jackson, had never once contacted Seaboard about its difficulties, and the closure and liquidation of the airline had come entirely out of the blue, particularly so as Transglobe was not in arrears with its payments. "It is an extraordinary occurrence for the main creditor never to have been approached or even informed." he added. His personal feelings appeared to be that the Transglobe closure was hardly compatible with accepted business practices, and might well have been avoidable. The action to liquidate Transglobe (as reported in Flight for December 5. page 923) was put in motion by Ocean Steam Ship Co and Bolton Steam Shipping Co, holding 27 per cent and 38 per cent of the airline's shares respectively, three weeks after the chairman and managing director, Mr S. Wilson, who held 34 per cent of the shares, had resigned. Seaboard makes no bones about the fact that its main concern is to protect its assets, the six CL-44s; these have a book value of $16 million (about £6.7 million), which observers consider remarkably high in relation to present market values of turboprop aircraft. The company name of Tradewind has been registered in Britain by Seaboard, but no company has been formally constituted. It was registered so as to have a nucleus round which a new CL-44 operator could be formed. Seaboard says that it did not necessarily intend to retain a stake in the company, because it would have needed the approval of the US Civil Aeronautics Board to do so, and because it had doubts as to whether the British Air Transport Licensing Board would licence an operator with a substantial Seaboard holding. Negotiations took place with a number of British interests, among them Trans Meridian, about launching Tradewind. but although these are continuing they have so far come to nothing. FLIGHT International, 23 January 1969 Seaboard stresses that it would welcome equally the chance to lease or sell the CL-44s to an existing airline. The airline is to pay a retainer to the ex-Transglotoe aircrew who are still unemployed, in an effort to keep together a team of CL-44- rated pilots ready for action when needed. It is by no means certain that the ATLB would have turned down a licence application by a Tradewind which had a minority Seaboard holding; the board is only required by statute not to licence an operator which is "substantially controlled" by foreign interests, and there is as yet little precedent on which to construe the meaning of the word "substantial." What is certain is that any application by Tradewind would have met with strenuous objections from other independents, who take the view that with present instability and pending the Edwards report, this is no time for the setting-up of new UK airlines. EUROPE'S 747 CLUB AGREEMENTS covering technical and operational co-opera tion within the KSS Group (KLM, Swissair and SAS) have now been formally concluded with the signing in Zurich of the relevant documents by the presidents of the three airlines. The agreements relate to the details of the basic agreements reached by the three carriers in May last year, under which they will standardise the Boeing 747s they have on order. This standardisation will permit an exchange of technical services so that maintenance and overhaul of the 747s can be carried but more economically and with a higher degree of rationalisation. It will also provide the opportunity for the three airlines to exchange aircraft and crews. Swissair, SAS and KLM will in future evaluate all new types of aircraft jointly with a view to obtaining them in standardised version so that the co-operation can be extended. The three carriers have agreed to train their flight crews on a jointly acquired 747 flight simulator located at Schiphol. In addition to the existing bilateral arrangements between the partners of the KSS co-operation, the agreement contains the understanding that KLM will overhaul 747 airframes and related components for Swissair and SAS; SAS will overhaul the 747 engines for Swissair and KLM; and Swissair will take care of the overhaul of the airframes and related components for KLM's DC-9s. Periodic maintenance work on the 747s, as well as the overhaul of components changed in connection with in-service maintenance checks, will be done by each carrier in the normal way. The agreements are initially valid until December 1980. NEW US TOUR RULES SUPPLEMENTAL air carriers in the USA will be permitted to perform inclusive-tour charters for foreign tour operators. starting on February 10. Under the new rules, announced by the Civil Aeronautics Board on January 9, the board declined to exercise jurisdiction over foreign tour operators with respect to tours originating abroad and performed by a US supple mental carrier. However, the non-US tour operators will be subject to the same limitations as their American counterparts when planning inclusive tours to the USA. These limitations require: (1) A minimum of seven days between departure and return; (2) overnight hotel accommo dations at a minimum of three places other than the point of origin and not less than 50 air miles apart; (3) the tour price shall include at least all hotel accommodations and necessary ground transportation; (4) the charge to passengers shall not be less than 110 per cent of any available fare charged by a certificated route carrier; and (5) each aircraft may carry a maximum of three groups of 40 or more tour participants. The new authority for the US supplemental carriers will "enable the supplementals to exploit the foreign-originating inclusive-tour market, to encourage foreign travel to the United States and contribute toward reduction of the large balance of payments deficit," said the CAB. The board said that Pan American Airways had filed a complaint against the proposed rule and "conjured up a host of evils" which it believed would result from unregulated foreign-originating inclusive tours. The board said that PAA's fears were unsupported by any factual information and appeared to be exaggerated. "There is no reason to assume that US supplemental
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