Viewing page 452 of 507

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

HELICOPTER AIR SERVICE PROGRAM     443

"New Approaches

"Transportation technology is continually pushing out in new directions.  New concepts in transportation are proceeding from concept to drawing board to prototype testing.  Undoubtedly the future will witness the introduction of new modes of local and long-distance transportation.

"Our study of airport transportation has suggested to us some of the characteristics a new system should possess to successfully improve the transportation situation.  Without pre-judging the means by which it could be implemented, it would appear that a system could be built on a small module concept whereby a large number of relatively small, low-capacity units--some of which operate on schedules and some of which are unscheduled (and, perhaps, some of them even privately owned)--would be available to cover all points of a widely scattered pattern of origins and destinations.  Distributed throughout the total area would be a set of collection and distribution points.  A number of the small module units with passengers destined for some particular point would come together at a collecting point and coalesce into a larger unit which would make use of extremely high-speed transit to the destination point (which might be a distributing point from which the module unites would depart independently for destinations in the near vicinity).  A system of this type could combine the advantages of individual transportation modes with the advantages of mass transit systems and could eliminate some of the disadvantages of both.

"Such a system, which could only be implemented as a general urban transportation system, could be an answer in the future to airport transportation problems."

It may be that the module concept can be implemented in a system that would provide benefits to both urban and airport transportation.  (This concept is reflected in the so-called StarrCar design.)  However until such time as it is implemented, we believe that vertical-lift aircraft represent the only feasible means of expediting airport transportation.

The findings in regard to the growth of air travel and the problems of surface airport transportation have strong implications for the future outlook for vertical-lift aircraft and their operators.  First of all, they demonstrate that there will be a continuing and increased public need for helicopter service in our expanding national air transportation system.  This need will be expressed primarily in the nation's largest metropolitan areas, however, as the need arises largely as the result of factors which exist mainly in those areas and resulting from national patterns of population growth and land use.  These factors will call for future expansion of helicopter service into metropolitan areas not served at present, but expansion will be relatively limited in the period under study.  Criteria to apply to potential areas include:  (1) air traffic volume, (2) size and geographic distribution of population served by major airport(s), (3) number of airports, and (4) terrain characteristics of area served.

In meeting the needs of the US economy and society, which is becoming increasingly urbanized, the helicopter service is a service which feeds traffic from these urban areas into our trunkline and international air systems.  In this sense, it is similar to the original concept of the local service airlines which were conceived to feed traffic from less-populated areas into the trunkline system.

Second, these findings of public need for helicopter service indicate that the demand for their services will rise, thus providing for increases in scale of operation.  These are needed if carriers are to become economically self-sufficient.

III-52