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7/ How international airline fares and rates are made

small or big, global and regional -- that the number of airlines in the Conferences has steadily increased.

Governments have a more positive way of expressing their position -- by specific disapproval of what Conferences do; and over a period of a decade, less than five percent of 5,000 resolutions have ever been rejected, in whole or part, by any government.

Benefits to the public

And the public has benefitted, too, by the maintenance of high standards of service everywhere; by coordination and simplification of services; by worldwide reduction in the price of air transport in a period in which the cost of almost everything else money buys has inexorably increased.

The place of the Conferences in the scheme of air transport and international affairs is best judged, not by the people in them, but by the people whose business is to watch and control them. This is an opinion from the vantage point of the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board, as delivered in an address to IATA General Meeting by the then Chairman, Ross Rizley:

"You ... constitute perhaps one of the world's most regulated business management groups. But it is also a fact that you have reduced the need for such governmental supervision to a minimum, by statesmanship of a high order.

"This statesmanship is self-regulation; the ability to sit down around the conference table and hammer out an agreement that is the best solution to your problems. What is more, you arrive at these agreements by unanimous vote.

"...Thanks to your insight and breadth of vision, the need for governmental intervention is limited to government's appropriate duties. The public interest is more than adequately served by the intensive and dynamic and fair competition which obtains within your field and by reason of the co-operative spirit which infuses the members of your organization.

"It is no exaggeration to say that the existence and statesmanship of IATA, more than any other single factor, saved international air transportation in the post-war period from the disastrous rate wars and subsidy wars that would otherwise effectually have thwarted its sound development. The best tribute I can pay to the leadership of your organization is to say that it has created orderly freedom of the air."

-IATA-

14 May 1956.