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134  HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM

minutes, or a saving of 67 minutes. It would take fixed-wing two and a half times as long. From Philadelphia to New York would take 132 minutes on fixed-wing plus groundtime and only 30 minutes by vertical, or the minutes saved would be 102, or four and a half times longer for fixed-wing plus groundtime.

New York to Boston total travel time would be two times longer for fixed-wing.

Would a customer pay a premium for this service? Air shuttle New York to Washington, costs $18, downtown Washington to Washington National is $2.50 cab fare, and La Guardia to midtown New York is $3.50 by cab. You would have a hard time with your type of plane competing for short-haul airport to downtown, even as far out as Dulles or Friendship, would you not?

Mr. THAYER. Yes, we would.

Senator MONRONEY. You would be able to pick up at Friendship----

Mr. THAYER. I think the secret, say Baltimore to Washington, or Washington to Dulles, in providing this kind of transportation, realize in a large extent to frequency of service in terms of making it satisfactory to the traveling public, as opposed to a scheduling service. It probably wouldn't be very economical to operate an airplane like this between here and Baltimore with the frequency that is required by the traveling public.

Senator MONRONEY. I realize that. It would be, though, to pick up, for example, you might pick up at Dulles a load and then distribute that load to Richmond, Va., and to Norfolk, and maybe come back and pick up another load at Richmond and Norfolk, picking them up and bringing them back into Friendship or Dulles; is that correct?

MR. THAYER. Yes. That is where this airplane would perform extremely efficiently and very competitively.

Senator MONRONEY. It would be more of a feeder line?

Mr. THAYER. That is correct.

Senator MONRONEY. In a highly concentrated population area that would be very good, I would think. You could search out really downtown airports or barges which could very easily supply your STOL or VTOL as necessary.

Mr. THAYER. In every large metropolitan area you can find near the city center an area of at least an acre or two that can be readily converted into a landing court for this type of airplane.

Senator MONRONEY. Do you believe also that the use of the XC-142-A could save the Federal and local governments substantial sums that must now be spent in terms of airport costs for close-in downtown airports?

Mr. THAYER. I think this is probably one of the big secrets in making this airplane feasible to the airline operators. As you well know, the airline operators now us metropolitan airports, pay for everything except the running water. In a small landing court operation such as this, that part of the costs in operating the airline would be cut by a factor of several. I won't even know how to estimate it.

Senator MONRONEY. On a feeder line, in a highly concentrated area, with these air courts as you say, instead of airports, you could run a pretty fast schedule that would enable you to cut down almost every other kind of transportation time, could you not?