They Need Subsidies to Fly

COMMERCIAL HELICOPTER

TO U.S. military men, the helicopter is fast becoming as useful and ubiquitous as the jeep. In Washington last week, the Defense Department made plans for a heliport beside the Pentagon to permit aerial taxi service between bases in the area; overall, some 6,000 military helicopters do every job from air-sea rescue to artillery spotting. But so far, civilians have gained few of the advantages of helicopters. To date, only 300 commercial helicopters operate around the U.S., even though the potential market is enormous. Predicted CAAdministrator Frederick B. Lee: "In ten years there will be 286 daily helicopter movements between New York and Washington alone." Eventually, said Lee, the U.S. helicopter passenger market may total 133 million passengers annually, almost four times the number now carried by all airlines.

The lag in commercial use of helicopters is due largely to the lack of a clear policy on the part of the U.S. Government and the airlines. Both the Post Office Department and the Civil Aeronautics Board are anxious to encourage helicopters, and both have been experimenting for years. But the program is sporadic and small-scale. Now the Government must decide whether to push ahead rapidly or let helicopters limp along without help.

Any big program is likely to be expensive, at least in the early stages. Some 50 prospective helicopter lines have applications pending before CAB. Only three--Los Angeles Airways, Chicago's Helicopter Air Service, Inc. and New York Airways--have been certificated for scheduled passenger and mail service, and they already cost the U.S. more than $2,600,000 annually in mail pay and direct subsidy. Not one makes money. New York Airways, for example, runs 37 daily flights (8,750 passengers in 1954) between Newark, La Guardia and Idlewild Airports. Because of the high expenses ($3.56 per plane mile), it costs the line $14 per passenger per trip, but all it can charge is $9.50. Without a $1,453,000 Government subsidy, the line would have gone $1,190,000 in the red for the fiscal year ended last September.

The story is the same in Los Angeles and Chicago. Furthermore, the Post Office Department itself is starting to balk at the price of helicopter mail. Though helicopters cut delivery time from Los Angeles to ten nearby communities by 15 hours or more, the payments are so out of proportion to the saving that the Post Office would like to shift to trucks.

One big stumbling block to cheaper service is both the quantity and quality of the helicopters available for commercial use. The Armed Forces have reserved more than 90% of all production, and are boosting their requirements every month. As a result, few of the six leading companies in the field (Piasecki, Bell, Kaman, Killer, Sikorsky, Doman) have given much time to either commercial design or production, are currently grossing $500 million annually without catering to the civilian market. Of the eleven types of helicopters certificated for civilian use, all are modified, single-engined military craft with high costs, low payload, speed and range.

Nevertheless, short-haul helicopter travel is already making big strides in Europe. Overseas, British European Airways and Sabena Belgian Airlines have installed full-scale helicopter services. Sabena flies the same single-engined Sikorsky S-55 that U.S. lines do, has made such a success of it with scheduled flights between eight cities that it has managed to steal away a large chunk of the intercity traffic flown by Holland's rival KLM. The service is heavily subsidized, but Sabena has such confidence in its future that it is now adding three new routes. In the U.S., National Airlines, which already has a nonscheduled helicopter service running in Miami, will soon start up a nonsubsidized passenger service in the Norfolk-Newport News area of Virginia. National figures that the area's heavy population and twisting waterways, which make speedy land travel impossible, are an ideal field for whirlybirds, and hopes to prove it without Government aid.

Newer, more economical planes are coming on the market. Piasecki will soon produce a commercial version of its single-engined H21 military Work Horse which will cost $250,000 to $275,000 and carry from 16 to 19 passengers. Bell, Sikorsky and Killer are also working on whirlybirds with stronger engines and bigger payloads.

Truly economical, mass-produced helicopters are probably still years away. But neither the U.S. Government nor the industry itself can afford to sit back and wait for them to arrive. If the industry is to grow as it should, the Post Office and CAB must promote more helicopter service with contracts and, if necessary, direct financial help. As for U.S. airlines, their cue comes from National Airlines, which proposes to go out hunting for some of the 133 million passengers the CAA promises are there.

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