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HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM 255

By the calendar year 1960, our company's passenger business had increased to 309,107 passengers, the largest number ever carried in a single year by any helicopter carrier. 

Seventy-four percent or 230,274 of these helicopter passengers were carried between Midway and O'Hare, and comprised largely transfer passengers coming into one airport and going out the other. 

These 230,274 interairport helicopter passengers were almost twice as many as used the limousine service between the airports due to the much faster service and the intense surface congestion.

In mid-1962, the unexpected happened when the airlines serving Chicago moved all their service to O'Hare, even though O'Hare had not been planned to accommodate all of Chicago's air traffic. This has greatly reduced the volume and traffic of CHA's operation, which previously had the lowset unit costs in the industry. Our unit costs have temporarily increased because overhead for the time being is having to be absorbed by a much smaller volume. 

We did not activate new routes to replace the diminishing interairport operations because, at the very same time, the Congress had initiated its subsidy reduction program and we desired to cooperate with that program by reducing our subsidy as our operations decreased. 

This is why, today, our operation and our subsidy is small in comparison with previous years. The timetable in Appendix B shows the services we are presently conducting. 

At this point, Mr. Chairman, I might suggest that we have Appendix A here which is an amendment to the petition we have before the CAB on our 5-year program, which I will refer to a little more later. Perhaps it is too voluminous.

Senator Monroney. It is quite voluminous to put in the record in full. I think it is not too many pages. I think it can be published in the record, all of Appendix A. 

There appear to be several tables of data and eight pages of testimony, which would be perfectly acceptable to go in the record.

(The information referred to follows:)

APPENDIX A

Before the Civil Aeronautics Board, Washington, D.C. 

Docket No. 15684

In the Matter of the Petition of Chicago Helicopter Airways, Inc., for Issuance of and Order to Show Cause Amending its Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity and Area Exemption Order

Amendment No. 2 to Petition for Issuance of Show Cause Order Amending Certificate and Exemption Order

Communications with respect to this document should be sent to: Mr .C. W. Moore, President and Treasurer, Chicago Helicopter Airways, Inc., 5315 West 63d Street, Chicago, Ill., 60638, and POGUE & NEAL, 1001 Connecticut Avenue NW., Washington, D.C., 20036.

January 15, 1965.

Now comes Chicago Helicopter Airways, Inc. (CHA), and hereby further amends its petition herein by adding thereto paragraphs 4 to 12 as follows:

4. In its original petition in this Docket 15684 (filed on November 12, 1964) CHA requested that the Board issue and Order to Show Cause why its certificate and exemption authority should not be made permanent (or of indefinite duration) and incorporate therein provisions terminating CHA's eligibility for subsidy at the end of fiscal 1970 and imposing a ceiling on such eligibility for each of the