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HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM         121

tremendous urban blowup in southern California. It is becoming difficult to plan any increase for conventional ports. The loss, therefore, of the Los Angeles Airways would be a great blow to our economy and defense efforts. I was tremendously impressed this morning with the testimony of Mr. Sikorsky, who, when I was postmaster, brought the earliest mail helicopters into the San Bernardino area for Los Angeles Airways and visited this fast-growing community. You have heard him tell of the tremendous future which lies in the expansion of rotary-wing craft. The Los Angeles Airways is an integral building block for our future.

I am proud of the Los Angeles Airways accomplishment in obtaining night-flying certification, being first in certain instrument programs, in its training of many military personnel and the job it did for southern California in establishing heliports on a long-term, low-cost operating arrangement. These heliports save land and air space.

Los Angeles Airways pioneered turbine equipment. All of these things indicate to me the necessity of the retention and support of this program. I have a demand presently by space industries for two additional flights per day.

I would appreciate it if I may insert at this point in my testimony an editorial by Joseph S. Murphy in the Air Transport World magazine, in the March 1965 issue. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to read a paragraph or two from the editorial.

Senator MONRONEY. You may read a paragraph or two, and then it may be inserted in full in the record.

Mr. DYAL (reading): The administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson in the United States has come up with a startling conclusion on the subject of helicopter subsidy. In brief, it is that the continued payment of Federal subsidies to support passenger helicopter operations is not in the national public interest.

Nothing could be further from the truth. We can't imagine where President Johnson is getting his advice, but it's bad, real bad. And the indication that this decision was made after a "critical evaluation" makes the situation even more alarming.

Let's look at the situation objectively and hope the U.S. Congress will look at it with equal objectivity and force the continued Federal support of these operations over a reasonable subsidy phaseout program.

Point No.1: The underlying cause of all criticisms of helicopter subsidy, first by Representative Albert Thomas in appropriations hearings and now by the White House, is the belief that helicopter services in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have no national significance.

This conclusion in itself is erroneous. In fact, the inhabitants of these three cities rarely, if ever, use these services. The prime beneficiaries are United States and oversea businessmen seeking an answer to a national U.S. problem- the urban transportation bottleneck.

Point No.2: The helicopter operations in these cities have important national public benefits that are being completely overlooked by President Johnson and his budgeteers. The amazing thing is that this escapes him personally when the very safety and reliability of his own helicopter transportation system has been advanced immeasurably by these three helicopter airlines. Furthermore, the accelerated debugging of newer turbine helicopters has saved the U.S. and other free world military establishments hundreds of millions of dollars. The amount totally eclipses anything that has been spent in all of the years that helicopter subsidy has been paid.

Point No.3: If one were to agree that these helicopter services did not have national significance, it could only be on the basis that such a view is too narrow. Their significance is not national, but rather international. The Bureau of the Budget could only be looking at the problem with dollar-sign-shaped blinders to come up with its proposed solution.

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