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HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM 187 downtown New York, the journey to Kennedy Airport is reduced from 53 minutes to 7 minutes, and with the opening of Pan Am roof, similar time savings will be available to midtown passengers. The irony of our present air transportation system is that as jets decrease air time, the surface journey to and from jet airports becomes more difficult and time consuming. Moreover, the situation is getting worse; jet airports are generally far from the city center. Asa more and more passengers use jet airports, more and more passengers must suffer from undue ground time. Surface congestion is increasing--not decreasing--particularly at rush hours. Helicopter transportation is the only practical answer to this problem. In addition, in a city like New York, served by three jet airports, helicopters make the fixed-wing services at all airports readily available to persons near to any airport. For example, over 4 million persons are located near the Newark airport. By utilizing New York's airways helicopter service between the Newark and Kennedy airports, all these people have available to them the much greater frequency of fixed-wing service to the far larger number of points provided by the schedules at Kennedy. Helicopter service between the New York airports also improves air traffic control and air safety and reduces the requirement for airport investment. It permits a dispersal of schedules to three airports within the area without impairment of service. This dispersal improves air traffic flow. It enhances safety. It reduces the airport saturation and delays which inevitably follow from over-concentration of flights at any one of the three airports. When demand crowds the capacity of one airport, additional flights can be operated into another airport which is not so crowded. New York Airways helicopter service between the airports makes this feasible. Helicopter carriers have made substantial progress, particularly in the last 2 years The abrupt termination of subsidy for helicopter carriers is particularly inappropriate because the helicopter outlook is encouraging--not discouraging. We have set forth the trends for New York Airways in appendices 4 through 6. On any index, the last 2 years have produced marked improvement--New York Airways' commercial revenues have increased rapidly--55 percent in 2 years. While revenues were increasing, expenses were decreasing. Cost per passenger mile decreased 28 percent in the same period. High revenues and lower costs mean, of course, decreasing subsidy requirements. New York Airways subsidy per passenger mile has decreased 38 percent within the last two years. Even now results compare favorably with local service carriers and we have only just begun. As we show in appendix 7, New York Airways number of passengers per employee has not only grown faster, but today substantially exceeds the local service average. In 1964, local service carriers averaged 663 passengers per employee. New York Airways averaged 981 passengers. Moreover, as shown in Appendix 8, despite our shorter passenger trips, the commercial revenue per employee has grown faster and already compares favorably with the local service carrier average. We are proud of these trends. We think they indicate increasing acceptance by the traveling public. They reflect the lower costs resulting from the rapid improvement in helicopter technology. They vindicate our judgement that we can accomplish our mission with progressively lower subsidy payments and elimination of subsidy in 1970. Extension of helicopter service to other cities While the existing helicopter services make an important contribution to our national air transportation system, we do not believe that helicopter service need be or should be confined to these areas. New York Airways has sought authority to serve the Washington-Baltimore area and there are other cities which are logical candidates for early inauguration of scheduled helicopter service. More important, it is the work that the presently subsidized certificated helicopter carriers have done over the years in terms of equipment improvement, training personnel in the unique and exacting requirements of vertical lift operations, the development of downtown rooftop operations and, most recently, in the attainment of a feasible and practicable IFR system for helicopters that is now making it possible for helicopter service to be actively planned for other cities. The experience of San Francisco/Oakland is a case in point. It has been operating S-62 equipment, the dynamic components of which were tested, developed,
