Airlines with DC10s cut their advertising

Press, 13 June 1979, Page 1

Airlines with DC10s cut their advertising

By

LES BLOXHAM,

travel editor

Airlines bereft of DC 10s because of the international grounding order are heavily reducing their advertising campaigns. Missing from television screens in the meantime will be the familiar colour commercials of Air New Zealand’s big jets silently gliding from their hangars at the start of a new day; the aerial shots of Continental’s craft flying into a golden sunset; and the seductive French lass whose clinging wet T-shirt distracts from the background view of the U.T.A. jet taxi-ing for take-off to Tahiti. Newspaper and magazine advertising will also

be either reduced or eliminated until full services are resumed. Other airlines, like Thai International and Lufthansa, have amended their advertisements to show aircraft other than the DClOs of their fleets. Air New Zealand’s director of public and corporate affairs, Mr D. C. Saxton, confirmed yesterday that the airline had instructed its advertising agency to promote only domestic travel and some overseas holiday destinations such as Fiji. U.T.A. and Continental have withdrawn all advertising from today until such time as their DClOs

are flying again. When that will be, noone knows. Continental decided yesterday to abandon all of its flights out of Auckland until June 24. In the meantime, other airlines with scheduled DCIO services are trying to make do with other aircraft. Singapore Airlines yesterday flew from Auckland with more than 400 passengers in a Boeing 747 destined for Singapore. On Friday the airline will send in a 707 to pick up more stranded passengers. Today, U.T.A. will fly a special DCB service from Noumea through Auckland to Tahiti and

back to rescue other passengers marooned on the islands. ‘ Air New Zealand is battling on with its one DCB which, tomorrow evening, will take a replacement engine for the

DCB crippled while on its take-off run at Honolulu on Monday. That aircraft is r.ot now expected to be back into service until Saturday. The third DCB, which is undergoing a big overhaul for conversion into a

freighter, is being hurriedly prepared for service by, the airline hopes, the middle of next week. The airline lost the use for 24 hours of one of its two internationally equipped Boeing 737 s , when a fault developed in its gyroscope (artificial horizon) at Nandi on Sunday. A replacement had to be flown to Fiji on an Air " Pacific flight yesterday and the 737 was expected to be back in Auckland late last evening. The airline’s other 737, which has been undergoing a maintenance check at Christchurch, will be ready for service this morning. Both aircraft will

then be used on the Auck-land-Nandi and AucklandPago Pago routes. Both have also been cleared for Tasman crossings if they are needed, but this could be Friday at the earliest. The rest of the domestic Boeing fleet is not equipped to fly the Tasman. The situation out of Christchurch is not so serious as it is in Auckland where, by Friday, there will be a backlog of 570 west-bound and 520 ea s t-bound passengers waiting for Tasman flights. In Christchurch those passengers unable to get immediately on to flights are at least being

given confirmed bookings on other flights within a day or two. Contrary to some reports yesterday the airline has not acquired a Boeing 747 on charter. It has, however, arranged with Qantas to provide the occasional 747 flight when the backlog for Tasman crossings becomes unmanageable. In addition to passengers stranded around the world, the airline also has crews waiting to be picked up.

Suggestions yesterday that the British Government might issue its own certificate of airworthiness to ailow DClOs out of the United States to fly again were dismissed by informed sources in the aviation industry as “pipe dreams.” British Airways has no DClOs. As the only airlines using them in Britain are Laker and British Caledonian, it is unlikely that the Government will be in any hurry to assist its national airline's cutprice competitors. In any case, the United States would not recognise another country’s certificate while its ban was in force and would refuse to grant permission for DClOs to enter its airspace. DC 10 pylons report, Page