I.A.T.A. study charters

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32965, 11 July 1972, Page 14

I.A.T.A. study charters

Although the world’s scheduled airlines had not reacted quickly enough to stave off the threat posed by charter operators, efforts were being made to counter their activities, said the secretary of the International Air Transport Association (Mr A. M. Black) in Christchurch yesterday.

This was being achieved by scheduled carrier operating charters themselves and by offering a variety of special excursion fares.

While it was a difficult time to do this because of the depressed state of the market there had been a rapid increase in the volume of air traffic in the first six months of this year, he said.

“The airlines are trying to even out the peaks and troughs by off-season fares, and now there is Selk of a shoulder season between the high and low seasons with an intermediate type of fare Ito gain more traffic,” he said. How the airlines would (come out of all this was hard | to determine because many scheduled carriers felt that (the dice was loaded against them, said Mr Black. Charter operators were able to skim the cream of the market

without being subject to the same limitations under which scheduled carrier operated. On the subject of hijacking of planes he said that I.A.T.A. had been very active behind the scenes with the United Nations Secretary-General and with Governments in trying to get them to implement the resolutions of the two anti-hijacking conventions. The recent action of the pilots in their one-day strike had served as useful shock therapy, and he believed it had served to get Governments to make a move against piracy in the skies. Mr Black has been in New Zealand to discuss arrangements with Air New Zealand about the annual general meeting of I.A.T.A. which will be held in Auckland in November, 1973.