Airlines: A Pattern for the 70s

For the past three years, 17 U.S. airlines have been in a fierce fight for control of new territory. Up for consideration before the Civil Aeronautics Board have been all the existing U.S. air routes and all the new routes that the airlines would like to fly over a vast area washed by the Pacific Ocean. The final allocation of flight lines will affect American-flag traffic over half the globe—including great swaths of North America, Asia and Australia.

After studying the airlines' voluminous claims and proposals, CAB Examiner Robert L. Park, 48, recommended a parceling of routes among seven applicants. They include the three Pacific veterans—Pan American, Northwest and United Air Lines—and three newcomers, including Trans World Airlines, Eastern and Western. Cargo-carrying Flying Tiger Line also got a piece of the action. Approval of the CAB's full five-member board and the President is required before Park's decision becomes final, but the $23,700-a-year examiner's 215-page recommendation gave the front runners a long lead on what Park called "the basic pattern in the Pacific for the next ten years or more." What they stand to win:

· Pan American, whose Clipper flying boats pioneered transpacific air services in the 1930s, would lose its long monopoly on U.S.-flag service to the South Pacific islands. But it would receive new lift elsewhere, including New York-to-Tokyo Great Circle flights in competition with Northwest and new services to Hawaii and the Orient from three West Coast cities. It would also get permanent permission for its recently inaugurated flights from New York to Hawaii and the Orient. Passenger stopover privileges on these flights, now limited to San Francisco and Los Angeles, could be expanded to other West Coast cities. All of which would put Pan Am on a better footing with its main Pacific rivals: Qantas, Japan Air Lines and BOAC.

· Northwest, which now faces new Pan Am competition on the North Pacific route, which it once had to itself, would get a potential gold mine in fast-rising tourist traffic to Hawaii and the Orient, with direct routes from eleven cities ranging from Minneapolis to Boston.

· United, the domestic carrier that is the nation's biggest airline (1967 revenues: $1 billion), lost its bid to go international, but was given a chance to tap new mainland cities for its rich Hawaiian trade, which already accounts for a third of its earnings.

· TWA was promised its first transpacific routes to the Orient (via Hawaii and Guam), a chance to become a genuine global airline in full competition with Pan Am for the fast-growing round-the-world passenger traffic.

· Eastern, which as recently as 1963 was shaky enough to ask for a $33 million subsidy, got a chance to change from a domestic carrier into a major international airline, giving Pan Am its first U.S.-flag competition in such South Pacific areas as New Zealand, Tahiti and the Fiji Islands—not from U.S West Coast cities (which Pan Am serves), but from eleven mainland points plus Mexico City and Acapulco.

· Western may join the Hawaiian rush with flights not only from Western and Midwestern cities, but also from Anchorage, Alaska.