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HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM         83

Very soon afterward, the public demand for the previous service prompted the Belgian Ministry of Transport to provide subsidy aid to the airline so that it could resume its helicopter service. The most interesting aspect of the situation is that the Belgian Government undertook this action purely to safeguard the future of their transportation system.

There is no Belgian helicopter manufacturing industry nor any significant amount of other commercial operations whose interests were to be considered. How much greater then is the case for this kind of backing in the United States where the future progress of both segments of the industry would suffer serious setbacks.

Basically, and of greatest importance, is that the traveling public from points all over the United States has found the present services to be useful and desirable.

In 1964 some 607,000 persons flew the scheduled helicopter carriers and this is a 33 percent more than the number that flew these services in the year 1962. And the rate is increasing daily due to increasing efficiencies in operations being continuously gained from the new flight equipment, some of which is still being phased into operations. It is obvious that the traveling public wants this service and will support it.

Everyone realizes that short-haul transportation, especially in congested metropolitan areas, is one of the most vexing problems of this country. And it can be expected to get worse before it gets better.

Furthermore, there is no single solution to the problem; improved highways, newer rail facilities, subway lines and air terminals are all needed to meet this situation. We believe that helicopter transportation is also need to complement and supplement these other systems.

In fact, the helicopter has definite potential to help alleviate several of our most pressing transportation needs:

1. By improving city-center to airport movement;

2. By linking nearby cities on a city-center to city-center basis;

and,

3. By tying together the widely spread-out sections of a single, large metropolitan area.

One of the most attractive and significant facts in this tri-part potential is that helicopter lines require no expensive rights-of-way and can function efficiently without large or elaborate terminal facilities.

It is the only mode of transportation developed in the last 200 years that offers this valuable advantage. No study of comparative methods of transportation should look only at the operating cost of the various vehicles while simultaneously overlooking the total cost, for the latter is a very great item.

At the moment, what else can we do? As one news journal said a short while ago:

Let's stop thinking about helicopters solely in terms of their break-even costs and think about them in terms of what they can do in protecting present air transport markets and expanding future ones.

Also, let's stop criticizing the helicopter because it can't operate at the same cost as a city bus. After all, we have seriously criticized the buses for not being able to travel three dimensionally at speeds up to 120 miles per hour.