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Aviation History
1983
1983 - 0166.PDF
AIR TRANSPORT UK Government keepsairport secrets LONDON The group of 18 international airlines which is legally chal lenging She British Airports Authority's Heathrow landing and handling charges has failed to gain access to Government papers detailing financial arrangements by the Trade Department with the BAA. The House of Lords' "law lords" unanimously rejected an appeal by the airlines for access to Government papers which the carriers believe would help them in their case against the BAA, which is to be heard in the High Court starting next month. It was in 1980, when the BAA had raised Heathrow landing charges by 35 per cent, that the airlines (led by Air Canada) started to assem ble their case that Heathrow charges are unreasonably, even illegally, high. In 1981 the BAA put up the fees by the rate of inflation and since then has frozen them until April this year. The international airline group wants the Government papers mainly to back its con tention that the Trade Minis ter exceeded his consti tutional powers by setting profit targets for the BAA which forced the 35 per cent charges increase. The Author ity was not, and still is not, allowed to raise money for fu ture developments on the open money market, yet it needs vast sums for London airports development in the next 15 years. Late last year BAA's chair man and the transport minis ter were discussing the possi bility of releasing the Authority to raise money pri vately, but for the time being it can go only to the National Loans Fund. 9 Into the current inquiry about whether Heathrow will get a fifth terminal (T5), the London water authorities have thrown a wet rag. T5 would have to be built on the site of a sewage works within Heathrow's present bound aries, and the water author ities have said that the cost of setting up the works else where would be £100 million, not £50 million as stated in some early estimates. Arrow and Capitol cut back Both the airlines owned by Miami's George Batchelor have been forced to cut back on staff and services. Capitol Air and Arrow Air have made the cuts because of what a Batchelor group spokesman has called "light traffic and uneconomic fare wars". Capitol has reduced the fre quency of its services in both the US transcontinental and the New York-Europe mar kets, and plans to lay off up to 25 per cent of its 1,700 em ployees by the end of January. But the airline hopes to recall all of its furloughed staff in April, when its spring and summer schedule begins. The Batchelor group claims that the lay-offs partly reflect "a seasonal winter adjustment when Capitol normally has light traffic volume". Arrow is laying off 255 of its 530 workforce. According to Arrow's UK director Ed Woodhouse, its staff cuts are partly due to a slowdown in passenger charter work in the winter months, and partly to some unsuccessful passenger schedules. Arrow has dropped its ser- Shorts' Sherpa, the cargo variant of the 330, has departed on an international demonstration tour ''^Ife 1 ~W£k^r* ##f*' « -^f*.^ •• -r•^^^H•*l••l--•*u^'' u* vices from Honolulu to Pago Pago and Guam after oper ating them for only about two months. According to Wood- house, the airline is unlikely to restart its Pacific schedules because of the losses it made. The carrier has also tempo rarily suspended its daily New York-Miami service, which were introduced to try to make some money from what were actually positioning flights. Arrow hopes to re sume this service in February, but the decision depends on traffic demand. According to Woodhouse, Arrow also hopes to be able to re-employ some of its fur loughed workers in the sum mer, when passenger charter business is expected to pick up. "We expect Arrow's pas senger charter business this summer to be as good as last summer's," he says. Arrow is not laying off any staff in the UK; the airline is actually still hiring in Britain for its new transatlantic scheduled operation. But Arrow is dropping one mid week flight on the Tampa- London Gatwick route in Feb ruary, until the summer season. Weekend traffic, how ever, has been good. Arrow intends to begin Denver-London services on May 28. Permission has been obtained from the UK Civil Aviation Authority. Sherpa goes on tour BELFAST Shorts' new roll-on/roll-off freighter variant of the 330, the Sherpa, took off last week on the first of a series of demonstration flights. The aircraft will be shown to po tential customers in North America, the UK, and Europe, before being taken to South East Asia, Australia, and the Pacific regions in the spring. Shorts reports that final loading tests carried out at Belfast in early January have confirmed that large items of freight and standard airline containers can be loaded quickly, utilising the specially developed roll-on/roll-off equipment. The company is confident the aircraft will also appeal to military markets offering, says Shorts, "mini- Hercules capabilities". FIGHT International, 29 January 1983
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