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182           HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM

Senator MONRONEY. I know he is a leader in thought in the United States Senate. He fosters many new ideas and many of these have been achieved by persuasion.

Right now, as you know, we have had 3 years of very bruising fights, in which the bill as finally passed carried a House conference report stating that after this fiscal year which is now expiring on July 1, that there would be no more subsidies available and that the House conferees on the Appropriations Committee, and it said a majority of the Senate conferees, agreed to this matter. I think they violated protocol between the two Houses in presuming to speak for the Senate conferees. There can certainly be no doubt about the adamant position of the House on the continuation of helicopter subsidies.

I, too, feel that the 5-year phaseout subsidy program is one that might justifiably produce an independent and unsubsidized helicopter service within 5 years. I also feel in order to get continuation of that subsidy for 5 years will require more than we have today.

It seems to me that since about the first fifth of a flight to a destination by jet aircraft, and the last one-fifth of a jet flight, timewise, is consumed on transportation from one's home of the downtown area of a city to the airport to board the jet aircraft, and transfer at the other end from the airport to downtown, which makes about two-fifths of the jet flight, is by surface transportation, which is time consuming and often consumes almost as long at both ends as the time the jet flight itself requires, the trunklines should be concerned to some degree with finding a way in which they can assist us in subsidizing these helicopter operations so that we can have more towns participate in it.

The Senator spoke well and spoke with the political sagacity he always shows when he mentioned the fact that more towns have to have it. If we can't spread it to other cities, such as the Washington, D.C., area, including Baltimore, and Houston, with their new airport, which is quite a distance from the downtown part of the city, the complex around Atlanta, Marietta, and such places, would probably require it.

Thus, we might have to see ourselves expanding it without the funds to do so. I wonder what the Senator would think about the gentle art of persuasion to see if these lines that are so heavily subsidized by Uncle Sam to establish them could not help now, since they are in a very profitable position, to cost-share the helicopter ticket that the passenger could buy to get from downtown to the airport and from the airport to downtown at a more reasonable figure.

Senator JAVITS. I would say to the Senator that this is uniquely the area in which a Government agency which is lively can help. It is very difficult, though we have done it on occasion in the Congress, to call in the parties in interest in a private enterprise situation, in order to get them to do something which they ought to do and which also has an element of the public interest.

A lively Government agency can often do that. I think that if the CAB really is serious about its plan——and I believe it is——it should make as part of its plan an effort to provide for an extension of this type of service for its rationalization, with the greatest efficiency and economy, by calling in the airlines and seeing what can be done with them.

And, I might add, by calling in the mayors of cities this could be done. I believe they would have to show some initiative.