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HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM     111

differentiate between either operation. A permanent certificate would, of course, be helpful in assuring the necessary private financing so that equipment could keep pace with changing helicopter technology.

One more point I make with respect to Mr. Boyd's testimony that I think is important. If the Congress failed to approve the appropriation processes the decisions and the determinations of the Civil Aeronautics Board, it would give rise, so far as the law is concerned, to a valid claim before the Court of Claims in our country. Certainly that is not a very elegant comment on what some people have been urging the Congress to do, to cut off and wipe out all the assistance which the law of this country continues to authorize.

I wrote a letter, Mr. Chairman, to the President last December 30, and simply for the record I ask your consent that a copy of that letter to President Johnson be incorporated in the record.

Senator MONRONEY. Without objection, it is so ordered.

(Copy of the letter follows:)

DECEMBER 30, 1964.

HON. LYNDON B. JOHNSON,
The White House
Washington, D.C.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: I am informed that a suggestion has been made to the Bureau of the Budget to consider recommending to you either the elimination of subsidy support for the certificated helicopter air carriers in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, or a reduction of subsidy far below the amount determined by the Civil Aeronautics Board to be necessary for meaningful continuation of the scheduled helicopter operations.

I am disturbed at this regrettable prospect. The service Los Angeles Airways renders connecting a number of southern California communities with Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Airport are vital and in the public interest. They provide an effective extension of airline service from the Los Angeles Airport to many outlying areas, helping to overcome long delay and frustration involved in surface travel in this highly congested metropolitan area.

I strongly support your efforts to eliminate unnecessary public spending. I fully concur in your philosophy that wasteful spending is inexcusable. I believe, however, that elimination of reduction of the CAB's subsidy award for scheduled helicopter service in southern California would be false economy, and against the public interest.

I say this for the following reasons:

1. The scheduled helicopter carriers are at the threshold, after 17 years of operation, of being able to operate without Government subsidy. They have proposed to the CAB a 5-year program which will see subsidy steadily reduced from a total amount of $4,200,000 for all carriers in fiscal 1966 to no subsidy in fiscal 1971, and with subsidy eligibility eliminated from their certificates after that time. Elimination of subsidy at this final stage of development would effectively destroy a substantial part of the development previously made.

2. Our military services would lose the benefit of a scheduled, grueling testing arena for new machines. The military services derive substantial economic benefits from the operating experience of the scheduled helicopter airlines. These helicopter airlines normally fly three to four times as many hours per aircraft in a a year as do military users. It has been reliably estimated that such experience, by Los Angeles Airways alone, has resulted in procurement and maintenance cost reductions to the military services of many times the subsidy paid to this carrier. It is also expected that further benefits to the military services will accrue from future operations of this carrier and that these benefits will considerably exceed the cost of subsidy.

3. U.S. leadership in world helicopter aviation would be undermined. As a result of the subsidy granted to the U.S. scheduled helicopter operators, benefits have accrued to the United States in the form of international trade that would not otherwise have occurred. Because of the existence of the U.S. policy of subsidizing and encouraging the development of the helicopter air carriers, the manufactures, of necessity, have spent large sums for FAA certification of these commercial helicopters. This in turn has resulted in the