Future of Air Transport

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23967, 7 June 1943, Page 4

Future of Air Transport

The latest debate in the House of Commons on civil aviation after the war continues a discussion that has been proceeding on both sides of the Atlantic for a considerable time Mr W. R. D. Perkins, M.P., who has frequently expressed an anxiety widely shared in Great Britain and the Dominions, has called for an Empire conference to discuss the future of British air transport. But any such conference must meet at the outset the fact that Britain, when the war ends, will have hardly any transport machines; and the fact is only one of several which point straight to the need for international agreement and co-opera-tion and, consequently, some form and degree of international control. Some of the most valuable suggestions for opening the way to international agreement have come from Captain A, G. Lamplough’s “ independent unofficial committee.” It suggests, for example, that the British Government, collaborating with the Dominions, the United States, and Russia, should invite representatives of Allied and neutral countries to “ settle the prin- “ ciples on which commercial and “ private air traffic should be al- “ lowed to operate internationally “ on the conclusion of hostilities, “ pending more permanent arrange- “ ments.” Such a preliminary conference, of course, would have to be followed immediately by meetings of experts representing the coun-

tries concerned to draw up plans based on decisions reached. The importance of the subject is. well emphasised by the “Economist": “ Civil aviation will have a peculiar “importance after the war. It is “the key to world intercourse in “ the future find the parent of mili“tary aviation, which has cast so “ sinister a shadow across the world “in recent years.” Discussing the question from a national angle, the “Daily Mail” picks out one harsh corollary: “ If we neglect civil aviation we shall cease* to exist as a “ great Power. The Dominions will “ inevitably drift away from the “ Empire and become associated “with other systems.” In Britain the immediate cause of disquiet is that since the war Britain has left the development and construction of transport aircraft to the United States, which must therefore enter post-war civil aviation with an enormous advantage, and, in crude competitive conditions, an overpowering one. But if the point is recognised by Americans in the spirit of a recent comment by Mr Juan Trippe, president of Pan American Airways, that advantage will not be exploited. He urged that the air lines of Britain and the other United Nations should be free to obtain, on equitable terms, all the ocean transport aeroplanes needed to restore the balance for fair competition after the war. But that incompletely defines the problem. The question of competition and the question of international control are bound up together. Theoretically, a control which entirely eliminates competition is possible. There would be grave objections to it. But to assume that international competition will in one set of conditions or another be re-established, as seems most likely, an international system within which all air-lines will operate on equitable terms 'will still be necessary tp regulate them. British (including Dominion and Indian) and American air-lines would take their place in such a system with Russia/ China, Holland, and France, which are all vitally interested and vitally affected. Before the war the Dutch air-lines set | a world standard for efficiency and Russian air transport was highly developed. China’s need for air development has been pathetically exposed in war and will be just as important in peace.

The problems involved in shaping and regulating an international control are of course numerous and difficult. They range from the purely technical to those of trade and national interests, among which those of security are paramount. But new conceptions will have to prevail over old. The most obstructive, that of the “ closed sky, ’ which ruled the period between the two wars, is obsolete. Once get rid of that, as “ The Times ” has said, ai d the solving principle, at least, appears in “one broad fact”;

Such pattern of the future order as has so fat emerged from the disruption ot the war is based on four stout pillars—the British Commonwealth, the United States, Russia, and China. They mark firm geographical divisions. In any understanding for the international organisation of civil flying after the war they seem destined to have a determining but not an exclusive voice. The collaboration between the air forces of the United Nations in time of war provides a starting point and a basis for the future common organisation of their air services for the needs of peaceful commerce.