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HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM   325

heliport facilities and heliport landing areas at the region's airports and at the World's Fair.

These facilities include the West 30th Street Heliport on Manhattan Island, which serves the midtown, the hotel and the central post office areas. It was built in 1956 at a cost of $500,000.

They include also the Downtown Manhattan Heliport on the East River which is adjacent to and serves the important air traffic-generating financial and business district. It was opened in 1960 and cost $218,000. Each of the heliports has parking areas for two large and three small helicopters, in addition to their landing and takeoff areas.

They each include single-story terminal buildings containing ticket counters, a public waiting room and a radio control room. In 1963, we completed and opened the World's Fair Heliport, the air gateway to the fair.

It will be one of the few buildings at the fair to be kept in service thereafter as a permanent structure. The landing area at this heliport is 200 feet long by 150 feet wide and the heliport building, itself, which is 120 feet high, includes also a restaurant and exhibit space. The building cost $7 million.

In addition to the investment in these heliport facilities, we have experienced very substantial losses in their year-to-year operation. For the year 1964, the Port Authority had an operating loss at the West 30th Street and Downtown Manhattan heliports of $188,000 and an accumulated operating loss from the start of operations at each of the heliports to the end of 1964 of $868,000.

With regard to the future, if New York Airways is enabled to continue operating until it reaches the point of self-support, thereby assuring that the new York area will continue to have in operation for the years to come this most important component of adequate helicopter service, we believe there may well be a need for additional Manhattan heliports.

One of these would be located on the East River in the area of the United Nations and the other at or near the site of the proposed World Trade Center on the lower west side of Manhattan Island.

The forthcoming service from the roof of the Pan American Building will also require provision for direct helicopter landings and takeoffs at additional individual unit terminals at Kennedy Airport.

For our part, therefore, we have demonstrated our willingness to back up our faith in the future of this service in our area in a very positive fashion and we can assure you that our support along these lines will continue in the future.

Yet, despite our efforts and those of the Federal Government and of the carriers themselves, despite the factors I have referred to above, such as surface congestion and geographical barriers which make helicopter service in our port area and throughout the tristate metropolitan area so necessary to the local, national and international airtraffic system, and so potentially attractive to the traveling public, New York Airways is still faced with developmental problems which must be overcome if this type of air transport is ever to realize its full potential for service to the Nation.

New York Airways must be given the opportunity to continue to increase the quantity of its equipment and service and, through experience and by the initiation of such important operating techniques as IFR operation, approval for which was obtained only last month, to improve the reliability of schedule performance of its service.

The value of IFR operating capability is indicated by the fact that during 1964 New York Airways had to cancel 2,122 scheduled flights because of instrument conditions. This lack of schedule reliability, which can now be overcome, undoubtedly creates a certain lack of confidence in the helicopter service in the minds of the potential passenger.

Further, these cancellations because of lack of IFR operating capability are harmful financially to the airline inasmuch as their fixed costs continue whether they operate or not during IFR weather.

With New York Airways on the threshold of this increased reliability, we believe passenger acceptance of the helicopter will be greatly enhanced and the move toward financial viability advanced considerably.

Last year, the CAB put forward a plan to phase out Federal subsidy for helicopter airlines by the end of fiscal year 1970. It commenced implementation of that plan in February. It appears that the CAB plan would expend in the next 5 years a little more than one-fourth of the $48 million which has already been granted in Federal subsidy to helicopter airlines.