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Aviation History
1979
1979 - 0947.PDF
FLIGHT International, 24 March 1979 909 FMHHnr INTERNATIONAL Produced by Bill Sweetman Bron Rek CONTENTS WOULD YOU BUY A SECOND HAND JET? 910 SIA TAKES ON THE USA 917 Wallabies and the sixth freedom Cover: Airlines of the third world rely to a great extent on second-hand aircraft in the class of the Boeing four-jet family. Flight's annual survey of the second-hand airliner market begins overleaf AN UNUSUAL feature of the life cycle of the larger marsupials is the fact that the embryo emerges from the womb in a condition which a social worker might des cribe as "non-viable." It has to make its own way into the interim shelter of the mother's pouch, where it stays until it is ready to face predators in the outside world. Far be it from Flight to liken the management of Qantas, or the Australian transport minister, to a collection of embryo wallabies. Australia's new aviation policy, however, appears to exchange one form of protection for another with a smoothness which any low- hours wallaby might envy. And "embryo wallaby" is probably mild compared with what Australia's aviation leaders are being called in some of the areas likely to be worst hit by the new policy. Seldom does one look to Aus tralia for innovation in the com mercial side of aviation. The Aus tralian opposition to charters and Sir Freddie Laker would have done credit to the defenders of Verdun, while the domestic system is distinguished by "parallel schedul ing": domestic flights operated by the rival internal carriers operate at the same time over the same sectors. Australia's new international civil aviation policy (leap), now being implemented in the face of opposition from South-east Asia and with the co-operation of Euro pean countries led by Britain, presents some novel features. If the airline and government com munities are not careful, they could set a pattern for the future development of the world air net work. Freedom of access to the Aus tralia-Europe "Kangaroo" traffic for all airlines based along the route was never specifically writ ten into any air agreement, but was implicit in individual bilaterals. It was also backed up by the Inter national Air Transport Association fare structure, which made no charge to the passenger for stop overs, despite the extra costs in volved. This was the state of affairs until the beginning of this year, when Australia and Britain nego tiated new UK-Australia fares. The new fares are partly in tended to relieve the political pressure in Australia for low fares comparable to North Atlantic rates. It is logical, up to a point, to remove some of the "standard extras" associated with traditional lata fares, stopovers being among the most expensive of these. How ever, the low direct fares to Aus tralia have been challenged by the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) as placing an excessive surcharge on stopovers. Where leap breaks altogether new ground is in limiting the low fares to Qantas and its opposite numbers in Europe, on a "third and fourth freedom only" basis. Thus Britain and Australia are saying to the Asean carriers: "UK-Aus tralia traffic is ours to dispose of as we wish, and you have no more right to participate than any other airline." The no-stopover clause appears to isolate low-fare traffic from the mainstream of the route, leaving the so-called "sixth-free dom" carriers such as Singapore Airlines (see page 917) as second- class citizens, with only partial participation in the market. No lata traffic conference would ever have permitted the leap fares; the sixth-freedom airlines would have blocked them under the una nimity vote. Last year's reforms of the lata rate-making system were seen at the time as a victory for third-freedom and fourth-freedom traffic, and were vocally opposed by carriers with heavy interests in the sixth-freedom market. What is ironic is that the Asean carriers were in most cases not lata mem bers anyway. Neither is Laker Airways, which has not yet given up the fight to operate advance-booking charters into Australia. Sir Freddie Laker was prepared to wait several years for Skytrain and there is no sign that his tenacity has diminished with the proposed Australian ser vices. Perhaps the aggrieved Asean carriers could get together with Laker to fight leap. For Australia, leap has been a logical reaction to contradictory pressures: those from Qantas for protection from SIA and Laker, and the demands from the Austra lian public for low fares. For the rest of the world, it is an indication of what "bilateralism" can do in making the world air transport system less competitive and less flexible. w.s.
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