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HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM          179

complex. You are the only State in the Union which has two helicopter carriers-one the Los Angeles system and the other the San Francisco system. For that reason I think you would be more than casually concerned as your good Congressmen have who appeared. It is going to take more than an appearance before this body, because this body has rather fallen in love with the helicopters the same as with other types of supersonic aircraft, VTOL and STOL, and anything that flies.

So it is a political consideration that I think must be entertained. I think the only way to prepare for it is to be able to say to those very great economizers in the House that somebody else is willing to help. Big Brother is going to come in. The trunklines were helped to become fat by subsidy in the early days, and now we are going to pay back some of that conscience money and help expand the helicopter service.

I am frank to tell you that I think we can probably provide the amount necessary to supply and carry forward the helicopter service that we now have on the declining base of subsidy phaseout in 5 years. But I don't think the House or the Senate is going to let us appropriate that money unless we can show an extension of helicopter service to a few more cities that have not had it.

Therefore, the money is going to have to come from some other place and more likely will have to come from those who have the most to gain by rapid transit to and from the airports, and that will be the trunklines.

I don't know whether there is anything that Los Angeles International Airport can do to help or not.

Mr. Fox, do you have any comments on how we can solve this dilemma.

Mr. Fox. Thank you.

I am Francis Fox, general manager of the Lost Angeles Department of Airports. I must confess I agree that the trunk-scheduled airlines do have an obligation to help this very vital part of the short-haul system.

Mr. Erickson made a quick statement. We believe in Los Angeles that the helicopter business is no longer an experiment. We think it is a definite and local service concept, with the average passenger trips some 40 miles. It is doing a tremendous job of distributing the airline passengers to some 12 different key locations, at which they would otherwise have to set up facilities, airports, terminals, and things of that nature. So I think there is an obligation there.

We are approaching our part of it, being the city of Los Angeles department, we provide at International Airport a quarter-million-dollar helipad which the airways use for some 50 cents a landing, which is a token fare. We put another $15,000 or $20,000 into a heliport at the Van Nuys Airport, for them at a token charge.

I think this whole project must really be considered as a local service. The project in the future that Los Angeles Airways had downtown of the helicrane, sky crane, we are working with. We are now negotiating with the railroads who run the Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to take over the air rights over their massive trackage system, and to the joint use of the terminal down there, to make it a downtown air terminal which will be served by the Los Angeles Airways helicopter service visualizing this sky crane opera-