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186    HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM

continue. It will pay high dividends in terms of the development of a national air transportation system which will serve both short and long-haul passengers in already rapidly increasing volume. Inevitably, it will also continue to make progressively more significant contributions to the national defense.

However, lest there be any misunderstanding as to the matter, it should be emphasized at the outset that we are in thorough agreement with the President's objective of eliminating helicopter subsidy.

Our sole concern is timing. The developments which are necessary to place vertical air transportation on a self-sufficient footing, cannot be accomplished overnight. Two specific instances from New York Airways' own history will make this clear; and, as it happens, these involve the two most important developments in the field to date.

The first of these is the IFR authorization obtained by our company only last month. This approval by the Federal Aviation Agency represented the most intensive efforts on our part, at the very frontier of aviation technology, over a period of some 14 years. What is more, although we now have the basic IFR authorization, its actual implementation will require another substantial period in order to consolidate this previously untried operating regime.

Of equal intricacy are the problems involved in the commencement of the service from the world's first carefully conceived large city-center building-top heliport on the roof of the Pan Am Building in the Grand Central area of Manhattan. The detailed design and planning work with respect to this facility was commenced by New York Airways more than 4 years ago. the engineering, financial, technical, regulatory, contractual, political, and other complexities that had to be resolved before this facility became a reality (and for that matter that remain to be resolved before these new operations can be consolidated on an established basis) have been all but unbelievable.

However, the point we wish to emphasize here is not that New York Airways has been successful in meeting complex problems, but rather to make as graphic as we are able the point that despite the recent technological breakthroughs the future development of this business cannot yet be expected to be markedly easier than its past. In other words, we will have to continue digging just as hard as ever before to bring the state of our economic advance to the highest level attainable with the technological means now, finally, at our disposal.

Just as it has required time for the industry to reach the technological position in which it now finds itself, it will also require time (equally obviously, we submit) to get beyond this position to the point of economic self-sufficiency. That essential time would be allowed under the 5-year subsidy elimination program reflected in the recent Civil Aeronautics Board orders, but would plainly not be available if all further Federal support for these continued efforts is suddenly to be cut off at the end of this year.

If that were to happen, we would have no alternative but to discontinue these operations, for there is no basis known to us on which we could, without continued Federal support, translate into actual services benefiting the transportation system of the United States, the revolutionary improvements which are now within our immediate reach after so many years of effort and the investment of so much in both public and private funds.

Importance of the present of certified helicopter service in the national air transportation system

Certificated helicopter service is now available at the four major air-traffic-generating centers of the United States: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco/Oakland. As Appendix 1 shows, these four cities account for 31 percent of all air passengers. With the service at these 4 points, the number of passengers now having access to helicopter service equals the total air passengers at the next 14 largest cities.

These benefits of this service is not limited to the four cities but are national in scope. This helicopter service is used by passengers from all over the United States who travel to and from and through the four cities. As appendix 3 shows, New York Airway's helicopter passengers come from every part of the country. Forty-six percent of our passengers reside in cities and towns outside the New York Metropolitan area.

The existing helicopter services are aimed at strengthening the weakest link in our air transportation system--the long surface time to airports. Without helicopter service, new York passengers to such cities as Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Cleveland spend more time on the ground than in the air. Even on a trip to Atlanta, surface time accounts for 44 percent of total journey time. the existing helicopter services sharply reduce the time required for the total journey. From