Airline Affairs

The State Government has decided that it would build a rail link 1rom the end of the present East Hills line, across the Georges River and around to the Campbelltown area. As the Hills line is one of the worst in Sydney and must be close to the top of the priority list for upgrading, a spur line into a Holsworthy airport site would provide another means of ground access.

The Army cannot fully test the effective ranges of its new gun because its range is too great for the bounds of the existing firing range. This and growing encroachment on some parts of the area by residential development are making the long-term occupancy by the Army less attractive.

As the Commonwealth already owns the land, it would avoid an estimated six or seven years in the courts compulsorily acquiring land from reluctant owners in other designated areas.

And with a New South Wales election in the relatively near future, Holsworthy looks even better politically. The State Government is still stinging from the rebuffs it received from voters in four by-elections and would not be willing to take on already well-organised resident protest groups in the west of the city. Placement at Holsworthy would also endear it to the city fathers of Wollongong, who see the employment opportunities offered by an airport as a means of easing the steel city’s chronic jobless problems.

Of course, the role of the airport would be a difficult decision. Qantas has a gigantic investment at Kingsford Smith and would be most reluctant to move. The NSW Lands Commission has completed a survey of one possible runway siting, and its 8000 feet length would indicate a mainly domestic role. Then there are the immediate problems of transhipment of ongoing passengers.

If there is a substantial redeployment of resources from Kingsford Smith, it will be interesting to watch the reactions of anti-airport councils in its vicinity. They would be facing a large drop in rates revenue and business in their areas would suffer as many of the 14,000 workers moved to the new airport vicinity.

Despite the activity on the Holsworthy front. there are also the odd whispers from Canberra that the government is not quite so happy that it slammed the door so firmly on the second north-south parallel runway concept for KSA and that the idea has been getting the occasional covert dust-off.

• The ‘watch carefully’ flag has been put up at the Australian Embassy in Washington as the machinations continue to restructure Continental Airlines.

There is a distinct feeling amongst the Canberra bureaucrats that the substitute Continental Pacific which is still flying between Australia and the United States may not bear close examination under the terms of the bilateral airline services agreement between the countries.

Unions here are distinctly unimpressed with ploys that would see all salaries in the airline dramatically slashed. The three-day ACTU ban which kept the airline out of the country may just be the first of more.

Other airlines, with some exceptions, are continuing to honour Continental paper, but depending on how long the carrier takes to get its act together will determine how long this will last.

While no airline looks upon another’s misfortune with much humour, there must be a little smiling behind the hands at Pan Am over Continental’s difficulties. Texas International boss Frank Lorenzo did very, very well out of the battle between his airline and Pan Am for National. Pan Am is slowly getting the National system to work for it, but Lorenzo used most of the profits to buy Continental. It has been noticeable that neither Qantas nor Pan Am has been saying much about their competitor’s problems. It is unlikely that either carrier would relish the idea of an airline like United taking up the other half of the American bilateral rights.

• At the time of writing, Qantas’s huge $860 million Boeing deal still had not been ratified by the Federal government.

Brian Howe, the Minister for Defence Support, has not been satisfied with the offset package being offered by Boeing and there has been some executive shuffling back and forth from Seattle as a result.

Qantas’ three 747-300 and six 767 aircraft orders is taking it into new industrial and commercial areas.

Its pilots are quite happy about two-man crewing for the 767, but its engineers, who see the 767 as the thin end of the wedge towards making them obsolete, are not quite as enchanted.

The 767 will not have a first-class cabin in the Qantas configuration, which, while it will head off any criticism from its discriminating first-class regulars that the 767 does not provide a truly premium cabin, high-yield revenue will be foregone.

The SUD buy is obviously to counter Singapore Airlines, which is offering a very high-quality first class on its stretched jumbos.

But whether the extremely high acquisition cost of the SUDs, well over the $US100 million mark, will justify their acquisition will only be seen on the Qantas balance sheets. Some airlines overseas just consider them not worth the money.

The airline became the first orderer of the Rolls Royce RB211-524-D4 engine when it chose it as the powerplant for the SUD. It is believed GE was well favoured at Qantas in in the engine selection race, but the airline obviously could not afford the luxury of having three engine types in its inventory. The order was worth about $80 million to Rolls for installed engines and initial spares.

• The aircraft which came second to the 767 for the Qantas small widebody order, the Airbus A310 has made a curiously timed visit to Australia after the horse had bolted.

A jovial Airbus Industrie president, Bernard Lathiere, told members of the National Aviation Press Club in Melbourne that the aircraft was here to give Australian industry a glimpse of the technology in which it could share if it could extract about $60 million from the Federal Government to become a risk-sharing partner in the A320 150-seater project.

The A320, which does not have a go-ahead, or a truly acceptable engine, for that matter, has at last notched some real orders. B Cal has ordered seven, with three on option, joining the rather more patriotic pieces of paper held by French carriers.

But it still seems unlikely that the A320 will be seen much before 1990.

Some of Australia’s money would be required upfront and it would not be reimbursed for this until breakeven, reportedly at some 700 copies.

While the Australian industry is most interested in becoming an Airbus partner, it is also keen on doing a similar deal with Boeing. It would like to work with both, but if it came to a choice, probably on money grounds, it is likely it would incline towards the Americans.

• Two of the best-established figures in Australian aviation journalism, Mac Job and Stanley Brogden of our friendly competitor, ”Aircraft”, are beginning new careers. Editor Job has joined the Aviation Missionary Fellowship, while Stanley has retired. We wish them both well.

• TAA has finally moved one of its Airbuses. Details had not been announced at the time of writing, but we understand that VH-TAA will next be seen with American registration.

The airline has been largely unsuccessful in trying to get excess widebody equipment out of its fleet.

Its negotiations with Pakistan International reportedly broke down on the Australian amazement at the “commissions” required on the sale of two Airbuses. TAA has also been unsuccessful with Air Niugini, which would dearly love to have a widebody in its fleet, but it cannot afford one.

• Are Ed Acker’s predictions coming true? Pan Am has just had an exceptionally good third quarter, netting $77 million in profit for the period And, for once, they didn’t have to sell anything. The operating profit was $76. 3 million.

Pan Am is attributing the success to finally getting the Pan Am international and the old National domestic networks to efficiently feed passengers into each other, although employee pay constraints and a 20 per cent drop in the fuel bill (schedules have been heavily rationalised) were major help.

• With a marked lack of consideration for our deadlines, the High Court (it’s a Joke, Your Honours) hearing of East-West’s challenge to the Constitutional Validity of the Independent Air Fares Committee Act began on November 7. The airline received a smack on the hand from the Court on its initial Application because much of the matter it wanted to be examined was considered too peripheral.

But East-West says the correct matters are still there to be focused upon as it continues to kick away at what are widely regarded as the already well decayed foundations of the two airlines agreement.

Meanwhile, despite the shackles of the agreement legislation, Bryan Grey’s airline continues to grow.

It achieved national carrier status with the addition of Adelaide to its network with Melbourne-Mount Gambier-Adelaide return cheapies. It has also received approval for Sydney-M1ldura-Adela1de and return flights and Is most excited about the possIbIht1es of its new Melbourne-Yulara (Ayers Rock, The Olgas)-Alice Springs-Brisbane and return license.

EWA is due to put its second F28 into service this month and has been looking closely at the possibility of acquiring more from the n<1N defunct Altair in the United States.

• Get the feeling that time is slipping away? Then you don’t need to remember that it is now 25 years since the first Boeing 707 went into service.

On October 26, 1958, Pan Am’s Clipper Jet America took off from the then Idlewild International airport (now JFK) in New York, for Le Bourget, Paris, with a refuelling stop at Gander in Newfoundland.

The 707 did the journey in eight hours and 41 minutes and had a passenger load of 111 There was a crew of 11

The first 707 to go into commercial service was sold by Pan Am in 1975.

Just as a matter of interest, the first Boeing 747 went into service some 13 years ago. Depressing isn’t it!

• A bright spot in the depressing international air travel market from Australia is the performance of Pan Am’s 747SP services, flying nonstop between

Sydney and the West Coast of the US. It ,s now flying, or about to introduce, five-a-week services are the two twice weekly flights consistently returned load factors In excess of 90per cent This creaming of the high yield business market. Which provides most of the demand for the SP flights, must have some Qantas execs gnashing their teeth.

The airline Is locked into the Wellington and Northern Queensland services with its two SPs until can get its hands on is 7o7s.

The sight of an SP, the world’s premier long-distance airliner, flying a 35-minute sector between Townsville and Cairns with four RB211s chewing away hungrily at a mighty rate, Is commercially laughable.

Who said Qantas could run itself to strict commercial cons1dera11ons and take no notice of shortsighted political pork barreling? The Oicks in Cairns are even campaigning to have their own Qantas services, untainted by contact with Townsville.

• The Queensland fiasco is almost as ridiculous as the Qantas southern Africa services, where politics force the airline, and better than 90 per cent of its passengers, to fly to somewhere they don’t want to go – Harare – to Tranship to where they want to go – Johannesburg.

The much-vaunted Government review of air services to South Africa? Are principles suddenly being watered down by economic realities? The latest trade figure between the countries showed Australia exporting$1455 million of goods and services to the Republic, while importing$90. 7 worth. Does this mean that in the manner established by the previous government in not allowing our athletes to compete In the 1980 Moscow Olympics but continuing to sell goods to Russia in “protest” at its invasion of Afghanistan, is being continued? The Government should get off the fence and establish its principles one way or the other.