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Aviation History
1988
1988 - 0911.PDF
KLM buys Dutch regional AMSTERDAM KLM is concluding the agree ment over terms for its purchase of the Dutch regional carrier NetherLines. Amsterdam Schiphol-based NetherLines has struggled to achieve profitability for a number of years and failed. NetherLines' parent com pany, the Nedlloyd Group, hopes to complete the sale in the next few weeks. The four British Aerospace Jetstream 31s operated by NetherLines are leased and are not part of the negotiations. The organisation and routes of the regional carrier are important to KLM with its extensive feeder network. "The main reason for the deal is that we are looking forward to 1992 and the single Euro pean market, and we want a good structure of regional airline systems," KLM says. Nedlloyd believes that the airline will thrive in the framework of the national carrier. Dornier goes for 328 deal with India NEW DELHI ~ West Germany has offered India the rights to participate in the design and devel opment of a 1990s generation regional airliner. The outline of the offers was made to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who visited Techno-Germa, the recent week-long exhi bition of German Technology in New Delhi. The Prime Minister was informed by a senior official of the Dornier company (whose 19-seat Dornier 228 is being manufactured under licence by Hindustan Aeronautics) that India could participate at the design and development stage of the larger 30-35-seat Dornier 328. The Prime Minister is reported to have appreciated the offer and remarked that joint participation at the design and development level would be the best option avail able to India in the field of civil aviation. According to Dornier offi cials, the aircraft, incorpo rating supercritical wing tech nology and the latest avionics, will offer a 10 per cent reduc tion in direct operating costs compared with its nearest competitors. In terms of its seating capacity and perform ance, it would complement the 228 already being manu factured in India. The 328 would be flight-tested in 1990 and ready for delivery in 1992. Prime Minister Gandhi was told by Dornier's Gerd Schon- buchner that his firm pro posed that design engineers from Hindustan Aeronautics come to Munich to learn Dor nier production techniques. Dornier hopes that the 328 could be used by Indian regional carrier Vayudoot in its future fleet mix, and also by the Indian coastguard for medium-range surveillance. Schonbuchner said that if this deal were to go ahead, then Dornier would buy components for the aircraft from HAL in India. The aircraft will be fully pressurised, will have a cruis ing speed of 575km/hr, and a range of 1,300km with 30 passengers on board. "Air transport chauvinism lives on" LONDON More European mergers may follow the British Airways takeover of British Cale donian, suggests Alastair Pugh, former BCal executive vice-chairman. Delivering the 1988 RAeS de Havilland Memorial Lecture, Pugh reveals the nationalistic or "sovereignty politics" which prevented the merger with SAS and caused "the least satisfactory of all BCal's 16-year relations with the Civil Aviation Authority". Air transport sovereignty will not die without a struggle, says Pugh, but "many other European airlines believe that this British merger is the fore runner of others that will occur before 1992, target date for a European Common Market without trade barriers". The Treaty of Rome's "Right of Establishment" does not mean that Lufthansa can start flying from Britain tomorrow, because each government retains discretion to decide which airlines to license. But an EC member nation's government "no AIR TRANSPORT longer has the right to refuse licences solely on nationality grounds". Recounting BCal's merger talks with UTA, American Airlines, and SAS, Pugh recalls the British Govern ment's concern about control and sovereignty. SAS gave the impression initially, with its straightforward "walk through walls" approach, that it envisaged a proposed 40 per cent stake leading to control. "But what is control? There are no definitions. The ques tion was—and still is—what sort of ownership... is acceptable in a multinational company? ... A section of political thought regarded the internationalisation of a Brit ish airline as reprehensible in itself." At one point in the nego tiations, the Secretary of State warned that if the CAA referred the sovereignty issue to him he would revoke BCal's licences and refuse to grant any new ones. Pugh has no doubt that "aviation chauvinism lives on" in other European coun tries, too. But, he says, Europe differs from most other air transport "countries" in that charter capacity handsomely exceeds scheduled capacity on regional services. "Nowhere else in the world are there so many charter airlines flying alongside and competing with scheduled airlines." Jet link to Faroes Atlantic Airways is a newly-formed airline registered in the Faroe Islands, an archipelago located some 200 n.m. to the north of the British Isles and belonging to Denmark. The carrier, which has recently inaugurated a Copenhagen—Faroes service with this British Aerospace 146, is jointly owned by the Faroes Government and Danish regional airline Cimber Air. FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL, 9 April 1988
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