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HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM                                  363

Other progressive airlines I think will join with you in this proposal to meet and perhaps achieve a meeting of the mind. First perhaps your trunkline carriers should be brought together to formulate some policy. 

It seems to the chairman of this committee, who has been through many advances in aviation, that the cooperation that you are showing on the SST in working together can also be shown in working together on the shore end of the spectrum - one that probably will serve immediately more people than the SST will serve. Not as dramatic, but perhaps more of a workhorse of a pedestrian nature. 

Mr. Tipton. It is very important to the SST, as a matter of fact. 
Senator Monroney. I quite agree. A person who has flown from Washington to New York in the SST will be rather disappointed in taking an hour or an hour and 45 minutes, which is just about two-thirds of the time it took him to go from Los Angeles to New York, to wait to get from Kennedy International to downtown New York or to Brooklyn. 

I wonder if you would arrange, subject of course to CAB approval, to discuss this with your members and to find out if there is any way they can provide more assistance such as expansion of joint fares. 

Mr. Tipton. I think, Mr. Chairman, here is what we could do in order to move forward on this. I think the objective ought to be to expand the joint rate program, which you have been critical of on the ground it doesn't cover enough points and so on. 

Senator Monroney. There is evidence in the record that they have moved forward within recent months to do this on a widening scale. The more universal it can be made, particularly on tickets costing $50 or more, I think would offer a fruitful area for exploration.  

Mr. Tipton. I think that that objective is surely one. A second objective is a program of explaining this available service to the public and promoting it. It might well be considered by the industry. 

You have pointed up a problem which we will have to solve, but I believe we can solve it. As a matter of fact we are having a meeting of the men who are experts in this area and who normally would be the ones to consider matters of this kind on, I believe, the 23d and 24th of March. I would seek to arrange a discussion of this subject at that meeting in order to discuss it. Because of technical legal problems we would have to have the Civil Aeronautics Board's approval to discuss this particular subject. 

Senator Monroney. I feel certain, although I have no word from the CAB, judging from their keen interest in the preservation of the helicopter industry, and their participation in these hearings just closing, that such request by you would receive sympathetic consideration. I would be happy to urge them personally to give that highest priority attention so that there will be no question on the part of any of the industry that they would be criticized or run into antitrust problems. 

Mr. Tipton. That we may well ask you to help us. We will go forward on that kind of a program. 

Senator Monroney. I was hoping that you would, and I tried to reach the CAB today but find they are all out in California on official business. 

Mr.Tipton. We are delighted to have them go visit airline points and airline manufacturing companies because it brings directly to