The transition in the United States of the Local Service airlines, first into Regional then into the equivalent of Trunk airline status, was the world’s prime case of inevitable growth as the Jet Age energized the air transport industry to new heights. Expansion was not confined to the contiguous 48 States. Throughout airline history, there has been a continuous and seemingly almost inevitable pattern of large airlines consuming small ones or, by mergers, creating dominating companies—a process that is common in other industries, the big fish swallowing the minnows. In the modern world of the 20th century, the enormous infrastructure and equipment needed to run an airline, even a small one, required considerable investment. But after the introduction of the more economical jet airliners, such was the momentum of air traffic growth in the 1960s and onward that the sheer demand stimulated unprecedented airline expansion at all levels. And this included those companies whose relative status could be described as the Second Level. Chapter 18 dealt with the outstanding example of the importance of this airline category providing a complementary service to the industry leaders. But the United States was not alone in recognizing the need for such diversification.
For any country to enjoy the luxury of such organized divisions of airline service, it had to be, by geographical necessity, big. The U.S.A. led the world because of its combined size, population, and wealth, but other countries also cherished similar aspirations. Other factors were involved. Even if a country was marginally big enough for a regional airline to take its place as a feeder to the national flag carrier, a good surface transport system sometimes obviated the need. This was especially true in Europe, where the railroad system prevailed, and in India, whose excellent railroads were quite adequate for regional needs, and the national airline also provided regional services.
In the largest country of the world, the Soviet Union, a single state airline, Aeroflot, held a complete monopoly of airline service, at all levels; but a regional system evolved from practical operational necessity within its organization (see below). In China, the world’s most populous country, the Jet Age, with all its advantages, was slow to arrive, as the so-called Cultural Revolution that followed the establishment of the People’s Republic, combined with the departure of the thousands of Russian technical teams, had left the country in a desperate state by the 1960s. It had, by a Mao Tse-tung decree, undertaken a massive railroad construction program, with the objective or providing adequate rail service from every province of the land to the major cities, especially the capital, Beijing (formerly Peking). But the state airline was little more than a service for Chinese officialdom. Some large countries, however, from their inherent demographic foundations, have been able to sustain regional airlines to complement the national ones.
Occupying half of the South American continent and slightly bigger than the contiguous 48 States of the U.S.A., Brazil’s development into an industrial and commercial power was not fully realized until after the Second World War. But its surface communications were fragmented. Roads were confined to the hinterlands of the large cities, and at least 40 different railroad companies, each with its local catchment area, with no integration with each other, could not be described as a system. The peoples of each region were almost alien to those of the other regions. They were held together mainly by the common Portuguese language, the inheritance of the former colonists, and by their devotion to the national sport, association football, in which Brazil was quite regularly the world champion. The inadequacy of comprehensive surface transport on a national scale provided an ideal environment for a flourishing airline industry, and indeed, Brazil has, since the late 1920s, been one of the most air-minded nations in the world.
The latent potential of natural and creative resources of this vast land were given new impetus in the late 1950s, when President Kubitschek made his dramatic announcement: “I will awaken the Sleeping Giant,” and proceeded to match his words with deeds. The most effective of these was to rejuvenate an idea that had been only hinted at, in some atlases for many decades, as the future site of a Federal Capital. It was located in the central heart of hitherto undeveloped land to emphasize to all Brazilians that the country’s wealth lay in the interior. As 90% of Canada’s population was within about two hours drive from the U.S. border, the same percentage of Brazilians lived only two hours from the Atlantic Ocean.
When the Jet Age arrived, Brazil’s air transport was in good shape, with VARIG as its respected flag carrier and Sâo Paulo’s VASP and Rio’s Cruzeiro do Sul as strong domestic airlines, providing efficient service between all the main cities and to all the provincial towns. Of the smaller domestic airlines at the second level, Omar Fontana’s Transbrasil had survived the process of “survival of the fittest,” and on 22 May 1975, VARIG had acquired Cruzeiro do Sul, which continued to operate it as a separate entity. They had all profited from the incentives to air transport and travel as Kubitschek’s dream of a Federal Capital emerged. With astonishing drive and initiative, the planning and construction of the city of Brasília was accomplished with phenomenal success. Among other domestic immigrants, tens of thousands of civil servants moved in from Rio de Janeiro.
In 1958, such was the volume of traffic between Sâo Paulo and Rio de Janeiro that the world’s first air shuttle service was introduced on 6 July 1959. The city of Sâo Paulo, growing to become one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas, was emerging as an industrial powerhouse, with German and French car manufacturers moving in to establish large production lines. Thanks to Kubitschek’s vision, Brazil had arrived.
By the 1960s, Brazilians were becoming car-minded as well as air-minded, as the industrial momentum included the development of the transport infrastructure. The railroads, with their multiple ownerships and different gauges, was not in the wake-up program. The interior of Brazil was instead opened up, with ambitious interstate highways, which, within a few years, connected all the big cities, and even penetrated the Amazonian jungles to reach Manaus. In the 1950s, it had still been an isolated and dilapidated city that had seen better days, with distant memories of the rubber boom of the early years of the century. By the 1970s, it was speedily recuperating to become a commercial and industrial center.
This nationwide decentralization had a profound effect on the course of development of the airlines; rather as an echo of the experience of the Local Service/Regional airlines in the United States, the development of good roads eliminated many of the travel markets that had hitherto been the exclusive domain of the trunk airlines of Brazil. They had done well as long as the veteran Douglas DC-3s had been in good supply in the post-war years, and they had sustained service with the twin-engined turboprops. But the multiplicity of small communities throughout the country demanded a replacement aircraft that was ideally suited in size for an equal multiplicity of individual routes, and even the HS-748s, F-27s, Heralds, and YS-11s were too large for this type of demand.
On 27 November 1961, with great foresight, the Department of Civil Aviation convened a 12-day conference at the resort city of Petrópolis, to discuss a rationalization of the Brazilian airlines, as the industrialization of the country gained momentum, and Kubitschek’s policy to develop the interior of Brazil began to take shape as productive lands were opened up in the interior. Savannah territory was developed for agriculture, jungles were cleared for farming, mineral wealth was exploited in hitherto undiscovered areas, and they all needed to be served by air routes to the big cities. The problem was how to pay for a vast investment in air transport, and this involved the question of government support (i.e., subsidy).
This had led to the creation, on 15 October 1963, of the Rede de Integração Nacional (RIN), which was broadly comparable to the Local Service Airline policy of the United States, aimed to provide a social service, as well as a market-driven service, to all the populated communities of Brazil. The difference was that the services were provided by the existing airlines, operating under strict surveillance by the Department of Civil Aviation to ensure that the proper levels of fares were appropriately allocated so that the subsidy grants were not abused.
At the higher levels of Brazilian air transport, where modern jets reinforced the inter-city traffic demands, including the expansion of the acclaimed shuttle services to Belo Horizonte and Brasília. At the lower levels as the veteran DC-3s wore out, mainly through sheer old age, the turboprop generation could not quite do the same job. They were not only larger than the DC-3, at a time when the fragmentation of Brazil’s expanding population required a smaller airplane, but they required better fields than the dirt strips in which the old Gooney Bird felt at home. The Canadian DHC-6 Twin Otter would have been ideal for the purpose, but the Brazilians found their own solution.
The industrialization of Brazil led to the foundation of an aircraft manufacturing industry. Brazil itself was inspired to produce an aircraft that not only helped to stimulate the creation of a new segment of the airline hierarchy, but whose quality and suitability to the specialized markets of the third level would gain worldwide recognition and a global clientele. The success of this courageous enterprise would eventually, by technical skill, good marketing, and visionary foresight, lead to Brazil achieving the status of one of the world’s commercial airliner manufacturing countries. In parallel with and contributing to this success was the establishment of the Brazilian Regionals.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Brazilian aeronautical engineers had honed their skills and unveiled a small eight-seat turboprop design, the IPD-6505, intended for the use of the Força Aérea Brasileira, whose mission in life included much admirable quasi-civil flying as well as military objectives. The potential of this efficient little airplane was quickly realized, and the Brazilian government provided the initiative to generate the necessary capital to create a manufacturing production line. On 19 August 1969, at São José dos Campos, about 75 miles east of São Paulo, the Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica (Embraer) was founded as a joint stock company, with the government holding 51%, to produce the airplane in quantity. This small beginning was eventually to promote Brazil into the hierarchy of commercial aircraft suppliers to the whole world. Embraer’s designers and engineers quickly recognized that the IPD-6505 needed to be larger. The redesigned EMB 110 Bandeirante was the result. It made its first flight on 9 August 1972, and the first commercial version, the 110C, went into service with Transbrasil on 16 April 1973, soon followed by VASP on 4 November, for service to smaller communities in the southern states of Brazil.
On 12 November 1975, another classification of airline was established, the Sistema Integrado de Transportes Aéreos Regional, to complement the domestic trunk and secondary routes. It was, in a direct echo of the U.S. system, a third level of commercial airline operations, but in Brazil’s case, a neat formula was devised to provide financial support for routes that were unlikely to be self-supporting. A subsidy came from a special fund, financed by a surcharge on all the tickets sold on the mainline and secondary routes, and distributed according to load factor—effectively a payment for empty seats, but an encouragement for the airlines to promote airline service where it was vital to aid the new pioneers of the Brazilian outback. To encourage integration with the main routes, each new airline would own up to a third of the shareholding of the new airlines created to meet the need.
The country was divided into five regions: the Amazon Basin, the Tocantins-Araguaia Basin, the São Francisco Basin, the West Central Region, and the South Central Region. Six weeks later, the first new airline was in business (it was already operating before the new legislation), appropriately in the Amazon Basin, where the need was greatest; but within a year, all five regions had their own airline. By 1977, the five third level companies were serving 121 towns throughout Brazil’s 26 states and territories, and operating 60 aircraft, more than half of which were the Bandeirantes, an 18-seat version, the Embraer 110P. It was an impressive achievement. The “Bandits,” as the Bandeirantes became known—as an indication of affection and respect when they went into service in overseas markets—served to consolidate and unify Brazil. It has been a brilliant example of how aeronautical technology can contribute to the basic economy of a whole nation. In the production of commercial aircraft, Brazil was to become an exporter, not an importer, and a positive element in the annual balance-of-trade reports. By the early 2000s, Embraer had built 494 Bandeirantes, together with 350 of the 30-seat EMB 120 Brasilias, and had moved on from turboprops to pure jets with the ERJ 145 family of regional jets.
The EMB 110 (Bandeirante in the 110P version) became a popular 18-seat mini-airliner worldwide, from Alaska to New Zealand. This was one of the first, delivered to TransBrasil in 1973. (Davies)
Nordeste was one of the small airlines in Brazil for which the “Bandit” (as the EMB 110 was affectionately called) was the ideal size.
In the largest country in the world, the Soviet Union, the mere idea of establishing local airlines was anathema to the political creed of communist central control. Nevertheless, even under the communist system, the urge to preserve local identities was still strong in the 1960s and 1970s, and geographical distances presented a practical problem. The Soviet Union stretched over 11 time zones—almost half-way round the world—and communities that were several thousand miles from Moscow felt that they should manage their own local affairs.
The state airline, Aeroflot, was charged with overseeing every aspect of non-military air operations, and it acted as the Transport Command for the armed forces also. It was about three times as big as the largest airline in the western world, and operating about 10,000 airliners of various sizes. Among these were about 3,000 versatile Antonov An-2 12-seat biplanes, supplemented by on-going deliveries of 48-seat Antonov An-24 and Czech-built 19-seat Let L410 turboprops, plus 32-seat Yakovlev Yak-40 mini-tri-jets: hundreds of each type.
These were deployed all across the Soviet Union, allocated to Regional Sub-Divisions, according to local requirements. The distribution ranged from the An-24s in the more populous regions of European Russia and the Ukraine to various small types, including jets, in the more sparsely populated areas beyond the Ural Mountains into the far reaches of Siberia, where distances tended to be longer and traffic far less. At the bottom of the scale of demand, the versatile An-2s, which could land on or take off from any grass field. Hundreds of helicopters, mainly the Mil Mi-8, performed vital services where no fixed-wing aircraft would dare to go. The services with old biplanes dropping into farmlands seemed to be defying obsolescence, and were a curious contrast to the modern jets that flew into the regional centers. In the more remote communities of the Siberian east, especially in Yakutia and Chukotka, where the melting permafrost customarily turns airfields into quagmires, any aircraft other that the little Antonov An-2 Kolkholsnik biplane would come to grief. And in the northern reaches along the hinterland of the Arctic Ocean coast, people in isolated villages, with no roads within a hundred miles, went shopping in the Mil helicopters to the nearest towns. The system worked very well, partly because there never seemed to be a shortage of aircraft, or of pilots to fly them. A 160-seat Ilyushin Il-62 could arrive at the main airports at Khabarovsk or Yakutsk, and passengers would take a short bus ride to the nearby regional airport to change to one of the smaller airplanes. A Moscovite could leave home in the morning, fly nonstop to the east, partly through the night because of the time zones, and visit a relative somewhere in the far east the next morning.
The vast extent of Aeroflot’s service to the Soviet Union is illustrated in the map, which delineates the 32 individual regional subdivisions of Aeroflot. Their dedication in providing air service to every remote corner of the country (an interesting comparison with the objective set for the Local Service airlines in the United States) enabled the airline to claim that it served up to 4,000 individual destinations. From the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, the achievement was unique, and will never be emulated.
This was a typical scene in the vast reaches of Siberia. One of Aeroflot’s Antonov An-2 is pictured here at Novo Kurovka, a small village north of Khabarovsk. (Davies)
In the most populous country in the world, China’s government has been communist since the revolution of 1948 and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) on 1 October 1949. The creation of a national airline for the P.R.C. had a checkered history. When the Second World War ended in 1944, the German-sponsored Eurasia ceased operations, and the Kuomintang-backed China National Aviation Company (C.N.A.C.), originally controlled by Pan American Airways, was evacuated to Taiwan in 1949, along with the defeated Kuomintang government. Most of its fleet, however, was left in the then-British Hong Kong, and in a remarkable episode, a dozen aircraft, mostly C-47s and C-46s, were flown out to the mainland by Chinese pilots who decided to remain with the communists. Premier Chou En-lai welcomed them in Peking, and the lone Convair 240, named Beijing, became the flagship of the line that had been formed on 2 November 1949, the China Civil Aviation Administration (C.C.A.A.), with a mixed collection of ex-military types.
With Soviet help, another airline was formed on 27 March 1950. Known as SKOGA, the acronym for the Russian name (translated as the Sino-Soviet Joint Stock Company), it had taken over the wartime Hamiata on 27 March 1950, was heavily backed by the Soviet Union, and received technical support, equipment, and even personnel from that source. It took over the routes of the former Japanese airline in Manchuria and provided connections to Soviet cities in Siberia. In March 1954, the two airlines merged under the jurisdiction of the China Civil Aviation Bureau, and its Chinese name was transliterated as Minhaiduy. With its fleet reinforced by a large number of Russian airliners, mostly Lisunov Li-2s (the license-built DC-3s), it consolidated the main inter-city routes in China, and added more cross-border routes to North Korea, to Vietnam, and, on 11 April 1956, to Rangoon, Burma, the first sortie into non-communist territory, during a period when the political policy with the West was strictly isolationist.
The full development of a substantial Chinese airline of any kind, much less any thoughts of regional companies, was impeded by several factors. First was the isolationism, which confined the availability of aircraft to Soviet sources, and though initially promising, this was cut off in the early 1960s when the rift with Moscow terminated all Soviet support. This included thousands of technicians who were teaching the Chinese how to build military jet airplanes, and how to fly them. Fortunately, they were good students, and when the Russians left, they had acquired enough technological expertise to build their own aircraft. Even so, this did not extend to the special requirements for civil airliner construction, and China moved into a new era of technology by ordering, in 1961, six British Vickers Viscount 800-series Viscount turboprops. These supplemented the Ilyushin Il-18s, Antonov An-24s, and other Russian types that comprised the fleet.
The second reason for the pedestrian rate of progress of China’s national airline was the relative lack of support from the highest government levels. Chairman Mao had perceptively realized that the primitive standards of transport in China was a reason for its former fragmentation into areas that had been de facto semi-autonomous, either controlled, in the 19th and early 20th centuries by colonial powers, and latterly by squabbling warlords, of whom he regarded Chiang Kai-shek, the Kuomintang leader, as one. In the 1950s, there were few roads, and the railways were still fragmented into individual lines. This lack of transport communication with the capital was a severe handicap in controlling the country. Top priority was therefore given to the construction of a national railroad system, connecting every provincial capital with each other and with Beijing (the new name for Peking). In an amazing program of engineering, this ambitious objective was achieved, even in the mountainous areas of western China, within three decades. Only Lhasa, 12,000 feet above sea level, in remote Tibet, remained unconnected by rail to the rest of China; that formidable target of construction was achieved in 2006, with trains that, like aircraft, needed oxygen for the passengers over the high mountains.
The significance of the railroads was shrewdly foreseen as the only way in which the Chinese people as a whole could respond to the sense of nationalism that was to be an essential part of their lives. The majority of the population was peasants, most of them living at subsistence levels. Famine and floods had been their heritage; few had traveled more than a few miles from where they were born. Only in the few big cities was there a potential middle class, mainly bureaucrats. Cheap rail travel, therefore, took priority over airline travel, which was expensive to organize and operate for a public that was not yet ready for it, either socially or financially.
In the 1960s, the isolationism began to diminish, and cautious steps were taken to improve relations with the capitalist West. The Chinese realized that in America and Europe, technological progress was advancing at a brisk pace, whereas theirs was at a standstill, because of new policies, such as the misnamed “Cultural Revolution,” which had destroyed much of the inherent inventiveness, craftmanship, and initiatives of science and technology. In April 1962, the Civil Aviation Bureau became the Civil Aviation Administration of China (C.A.A.C.), continuing as a state monopoly.
In the field of commercial air transport, however, China had a long way to go. Handicapped by an aging aircraft fleet, except for the Viscounts and Il-18s, it was also penalized by the isolationism that had prevented any commercial exchanges with other countries, or the knowledge of even elementary business practices or operational procedures. The combined intelligence of a whole nation had been suppressed, sometimes ruthlessly, unlike that in the Soviet Union, where it had been diverted into different channels. Many years were to pass, therefore, before those responsible for running C.A.A.C. could adapt themselves to the essential elements of airline operational and accounting efficiency.
Thus, while China’s airline flag carrier was trying to rise from the ashes of almost self-destruction, the idea of any regional identity within the country was out of the question. Several decades were to pass, and a technical and political revolution of considerable magnitude was to erupt, before the most populous country on the globe would emerge in the 21st century, with an economic miracle. This would match, and in some aspects surpass, that of Japan which, in the 1960s, was sweeping the world while China was just getting back on its feet. Regional airlines would not be possible for many more years. (See Chapter 33.)
While Aeroflot was developing overseas routes with its Ilyushin Il-62s, it did not neglect social services at the lower levels of the market. This map details the small hub networks flown by Antonov An-2 in the far east.
Wide-bodied “Jumbo” jets needed mile-long runways and extensive airport buildings and installations. Some parts of the world were not yet at that level. In the 1980s, this was still a typical scene in Russia’s far east (at Nikolayevsk-na-Amuri). (Davies)
The second largest country in the world might have been expected to have been a natural foundation for the initiation and development of regional airlines. But in an important respect it was far different from its neighbor to the south. Its total population was only about one-tenth of that of the United States (or about the same as California’s), and 90% of that was within 100 miles of the U.S. border. Traditionally served by two excellent transcontinental railroads, Canada did not even have a national trunk airline until Trans Canada Air Lines (T.C.A.) was founded in 1937—by Canadian National Railways, the government-supported railroad. Until then, all the airlines of Canada had been, by definition, regional, but realistically, mainly local or what could be termed third level.
Because of the distribution of population, relatively sparse except in areas near the United States, these were little more than “bush” operators, or served as feeder routes to the transcontinental trunk railroads and, later, the national airline. The fragmented individuality was rationalized in 1942 when they were amalgamated to become Canadian Pacific Airlines (C.P.A.), owned by the railroad of that name, which had purchased control of Canadian Airways in 1933.
Thus, for many years, even after the end of the Second World War, and in contrast with the United States, the spirit of private enterprise in forming regional airlines was not prominent. A regional airline could not be commercially viable, partly because the population distribution did not permit economic operations, and the two railroads, one state-controlled, the other owned by a transport conglomerate, had other priorites. Consequently, even as late as 1947, only four small airlines in Canada were offering scheduled passenger services. These four, together with a later additional company, were the foundation of a Canadian regional airline system.
On 20 October 1947, the Minister of Transport, J.W. Pickersgill, outlined a policy for the establishment of regional airlines with clearly defined roles that elevated their previous activities as semi-charter companies. They had offered little more than on-demand service to the isolated communities in the Canadian outback, or support for the military demands of the defensive DEW Line outposts in the Arctic north. Additional guidelines were issued by his successor, Donald Jamieson, in August 1969. These designated the specific areas of operation for the five certificated airlines, ensuring that they did not compete on the trunk routes of the two national airlines, but giving access to a major metropolitan area to each of the four. The five Canadian regionals were thus created with ministerial blessing.
Pride of ancestry among the privileged five must go to Eastern Provincial Airways (E.P.A.), which could claim a history back to 1941, when Maritime Central Airways was founded to serve the maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. These were somewhat detached geographically from the main centers of population in Quebec and Ontario. E.P.A. itself was founded in 1949 in Newfoundland and began scheduled services in 1961 to link St John’s, Newfoundland’s capital, with the important trans-Atlantic airports at Gander and Labrador’s Goose Bay; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and its designated metropolis, Montreal. It progressed steadily, adding turboprop Dart Heralds to its fleet of Douglas DC-3s and assorted de Havilland Canada single-engined bush types in January 1963. Then, in June 1969, it became a jet airline, with services linking the main cities in its network with Montreal with its first Boeing 737-200, leased from United Air Lines.
Another airline in Canada’s far east was Quebecair. Originally founded in 1946 as Rimouski Aviation Syndicate, and renamed Rimouski Airlines the following year, it provided a much-needed air service to link communities along both sides of the St. Lawrence River downstream from Montreal. It started scheduled services in 1965, when it acquired its new name, having merged with Gulf Aviation in 1953. Subsequently it took over a number of smaller operators in the area and introduced Fairchild F-27s in October 1958, and BAC One-Eleven jets in February 1969.
Also based in Montreal, Nordair was formed by the merger of Boreal Airways and Mont Laurier Aviation in 1957, and scheduled services started to Frobisher, on Baffin Island. In December 1968, it put Boeing 737-200 jets, also leased from United, into service and became the first airline to operate jets into Canada’s far north. Based in Montreal, and with a route to the Maritime Provinces, its role was primarily as a supply line to isolated outposts, for which it became specialized and, therefore did not carry a substantial volume of commercial traffic.
Further to the west, Great Northern Airways, formed in Winnipeg in 1947, started local scheduled service in 1951 and changed its name to Transair in 1956 when it merged with Arctic Wings. Its DEW Line work took it as far north as Churchill, on Hudson Bay, and Resolute, on Cornwallis Island, and it was able to upgrade its piston-engined fleet to turboprop Hawker-Siddeley 748s and Nihon YS-11s, but the population it served in the prairie states of Canada was not sufficient to justify jet airliner service. It also connected with Fort William (now Thunder Bay) on Lake Superior, the port for the export of Canada’s wheat from the prairies.
Across the Rocky Mountains and based in Vancouver, Canada’s third largest city, Pacific Western Airlines (P.W.A.) was the largest of the recognized Canadian regionals. Founded in 1946 as Central British Columbia Airways, it changed its name in 1953, having absorbed several small companion bush operators, and two years later acquired Queen Charlotte Airlines, which was already carrying passengers to the islands of that name. In 1957 and 1959, in a far-reaching decision, the Air Transport Board transferred some of Canadian Pacific Airlines’s western network to Pacific Western, and these included routes to the important cities of Calgary and Edmonton. These are the only Canadian cities more than 100 miles north of the 49th parallel, and at the time they were benefitting from the rapidly growing Alberta oil and gas industry. By the mid-1960s, P.W.A. was carrying more passengers than all the other Canadian regional airlines combined. In March 1967, it bought three Convair 640 turboprops and, in December 1968, followed this with three Boeing 737s. Alone among the regionals, it also diversified its activities into the international charter market, and acquired two Boeing 707-138Bs in November 1967. As will be seen in Chapter 40, Pacific Western was poised for greater expansion in future years.
Canada’s regional airlines served as feeders to and from the transcontinental flag carriers.
If ever a country was ready-made for the development of regional air services, it was the multi-island nation of Indonesia, fomerly the Dutch East Indies. In land area it ranks only 14th in the world, but much of its area is on three islands: Borneo, Sumatra, and half of New Guinea—all are among the world’s six largest. More important, Indonesia’s population, even in the 1960s, was some 150 million and, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has grown to be the fourth largest in the world, exceeded only by China, India, and the United States. More significantly, and unlike Japan, its several scores of populated islands cannot be connected by tunnelling, so that inter-island travel, by relatively slow ships, has invited intensive airline development. Except within densely populated Java, inter-city distances called for airline service. Indonesia’s unique geography put Medan, in northern Sumatra, further away from Jayapura, in West Irian (New Guinea), than San Francisco is from New York.
The Dutch colonials had established a well-run airline, KNILM, before Indonesia gained independence in 1947, and the Indonesian national airline, Garuda, was quick to reestablish an inter-island network, starting in 1949 and expanding to all the main cities and towns on all the islands. But by 1962, the growth of the nation’s economy indicated a requirement for a specialized airline organized to serve the smaller communities. Accordingly, on 6 September of that year, Merpati Nusantara was formed and was, like Garuda, government-owned. Its origins dated back to November 1958, when the Indonesian Air Force had provided social services to outlying areas. Under government regulation 19/1962, a transfer of responsibility took place, including the handing over of a small fleet of Canadian DHC-2 Beavers and DC-3s. This action was associated politically with the special status of what had been the Dutch half of the island of New Guinea, and which was still retained after Indonesian independence. It remained as Netherlands New Guinea until 1963; the transfer of sovereignty, along with the local aircraft fleet, was not completed until 1969. The Dutch had given considerable assistance, including much financial help to establish a local network, and this was continued by funds from the United Nations, which, in 1967, also provided some DHC-6 Twin Otters under an aid program.
Merpati grew quickly to serve the whole Indonesian archipelago and became Merpati Nusantara Airlines in 1969. It operated short international services, with turboprop twin-engined aircraft, to Singapore and Malaysia, to Kuching in eastern Malaysia (formerly Sarawak), and to Darwin, in northern Australia. It also operated charter services to the Philippines and even across the Pacific to Los Angeles, using Vickers Vanguard four-engined turboprops. Yet at the other end of the scale of airline service, mainly in West Irian (the western half of New Guinea), it still served dozens of small and isolated jungle communities with Canadian Twin Otters. Based in Biak, it even perpetuated the life of the venerable DC-3, using them as freighters to the dirt strips of that province. The men who maintained them claimed that no other aircraft could carry (as could the allegedly time-expired Douglas piston-engined twin) up to four tons of assorted goods into places where the strips alternated between pot-holed tracks when dry and marshy terrain when wet.
Such was Merpati’s enthusiasm in its appointed role (which denied it the privilege of operating jet aircraft) that in the mid-1970s it could claim to serve more points than Lufthansa, a total of 128, of which about one-third were the strips in West Irian. But its turboprop fleet measured up quite well to Garuda’s short-haul Fokker F-28 and Douglas DC-9 jets, and that airline’s chief, Wiweko Supono, felt that Merpati had been given too generous a mandate. During the late 1960s and the early 1970s, he campaigned to terminate, or at least restrict, Merpati’s operations, and eventually did succeed, in 1974, in preventing its purchase of jet equipment. Finally, on 26 October 1978, after the turboprop specialist had sustained heavy financial losses, the Indonesian government transferred its Merpati shares to Garuda, and thereafter direct competition on the main routes ceased.
Another vigorous Indonesian regional independent was Bouraq Indonesian Airlines, based in Balikpapan, Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo) and specializing in services to cities in Java and Sulawasi (formerly Celebes). Founded by J.A. “Gerry” Sumendap, who was associated with Porodisa, an extensive timber business, it started operations on 1 April 1970, at first with DC-3s, but quickly moving on to twin-engined turboprops, including 16 Hawker Siddeley 748s, which were quite at home at some of the unprepared strips. These were also operated by a Bouraq subsidiary, Bali Air, specializing, as its name implied, in services to that popular island resort. Like Merpati, Bouraq supported the local Indonesian aircraft industry, buying, in November 1978, some Nurtanio 212s, built under license from the Spanish CASA manufacturer. In 1982, the airline became independent from Porodisa, and Sumendap promptly bought four Vickers Viscounts from C.A.A.C., the Chinese airline, in September 1983. It was an astute purchase, as the fleet had not been used intensively, and so were almost as good as new.
While Bouraq specialized in serving Kalimantan and Sulawesi, two other airlines concentrated on the large island, Sumatra. Mandala Airlines was founded in February 1970 at Surabaya, Java, and at first served all the main Indonesian islands. It became closely associated with Seulawah Air Services, based in Palembang, Sumatra, and the two airlines cooperated closely, under the same management. Like the other regional operators, it used turboprop aircraft, including Lockheed Electras. Merpati, Bouraq, and Mandala (which absorbed Seulawah), together with Sempati Air Transport, founded in 1968, fulfilled the secondary, or regional, airline role in this far-flung island nation well and supplemented Garuda’s primary status for many years. Then, in 1989, greater flexibility was granted by the Indonesian government, which removed the restriction for jet operations. Merpati, especially, took over some of Garuda’s feeder jets.
A review of the Indonesian regional airlines should not be complete without a reference to a small company that specialized in air services to the small islands that extended eastward from Java as far as Timor. Zamrud Aviation Corporation, in a curious time-warp, could be observed, as late as the 1970s, flying Douglas DC-3s, of questionable vintage, to the Nusantara, or Lesser Sunda Islands. Lombok, Flores, Sumbawa, and other island outposts, looked upon this diminutive airline as its local bus company, post office, and general delivery system, providing a service that the other regionals either found impracticable or beneath their dignity.
Merpati Nusantara connected its mainline routes flown by the Viscounts (top). Elsewhere the versatile de Havilland Canada DH-6 Twin Otters (bottom) provided air service throughout Indonesia. This one is photographed at Banjermasin. (Davies)
Most of Indonesia’s larger cities were in Java, and were served by mainline jets. But airline traffic to smaller communities throughout this large country of islands needed smaller airliners. Shown here among the many different types flown were (top left) a Grumman Albatross of AirFast, photographed at Ujungpandang; (top right) a DC3 of Bouraq at Banjermasim; (lower left) a Britten-Norman BN-3 Trislander of Bali Air at Balikpapan; and (lower right) a Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander of Indonesia Airtransport, also at Balikpapan. (Davies)
Contrasting with the nationwide network of Merpati Nusantara (see map on this page), Zamrud Aviation operated refurbished ex-military Douglas DC-3s to the smaller islands of Indonesia.
Contrasting with the modern jet airliners at Jakarta or Surabaya, Zamrud’s vintage DC-3s were still, in the 1980s, providing essential air transport between the smaller islands of Indonesia. (Davies)
The Commonwealth of Australia was ideally suited for the establishment of regional airlines, not least because this self-governing dominion of the British Empire had recognized the individuality of the separate states. This was because they had first been founded as separate colonies during the 19th century, and not until 1901 were they federated. Each state retained its own railroad gauge, and the local loyalties remained strong, as evidenced in the intense interstate rivalry in cricket, the national sport. The shape and course of the colonial history was also linked to the special demography of the country. In the 1930s, the total population of Australia was about the same as London’s or New York’s; yet New South Wales’s Sydney and Victoria’s Melbourne each had more than a million each, and the other state capitals were also sizable cities, each with its own hinterland. Otherwise, the country was sparsely populated, with vast areas of either farmland or desert. West Australia was not connected by rail to the rest of Australia until 1917.
Almost exactly the same area as the United States, and with relatively inadequate railroads and almost no main highways between the cities and the “outback,” the development of the airlines followed a similar pattern to the predecessor railroads. By the mid-1920s, Australia had three airlines: West Australian; QANTAS (Queensland and Northern Territories Air Service); and Larkin, based in Victoria and serving South Australia. New South Wales had an adequate rail network to the provincial towns, and so did not need an air service at that time. The first inter-state company with nationwide aspirations was not founded until 1930, when the first Australian National Airways was founded by the famous aviator Charles Kingsford-Smith, but this enterprise ended tragically within a year when its flagship crashed.
Until the end of the Second World War, the development of commercial airlines in Australia was haphazard, with many small companies operating, often for only a short while, local services for a limited clientele. One of these, Tasmanian Aerial Services, founded by Ivan Holyman, eventually became a new Australian National Airways (A.N.A.), which by 1937 was operating modern Douglas DC-2s between the major cities of eastern Australia. But in Western Australia, almost isolated from the east, the regional spirit was strong. MacRobertson-Miller Aviation (M.M.A.) had replaced the pioneering West Australian Airways to fly the route from Perth to Darwin, to connect with the Empire Air Mail service from London. Meanwhile, QANTAS (see above) had been the regional airline in the northeast since 1919. South Australia’s regional had an odd history. Its name was Guinea Airways, which had pioneered air routes to the jungle gold mines of New Guinea, made a connection to Adelaide in 1937, and transferred its base there. In New South Wales, C.A. Butler founded Butler Air Transport, to serve the western farmlands of that state. In the center of Australia, E.J. Connellan had formed a uniquely social-service company, which became Connellan Airways in 1943.
When the Second World War ended in 1945, these airlines, together with several other unsuccessful aspirants, found themselves immersed in a battle for nationwide control. The post-war Labour government appointed a commission on 12 February 1946 to establish regional as well as national airline services. The result was the creation of the state-owned national domestic airline, Trans Australia Airlines (T.A.A.), and this competed with the spirit of free enterprise, Holyman’s A.N.A. The two airlines continued as rivals until 18 November 1952, when the Civil Aviation Agreement Act gave them strict equality of operating rights. By this time, T.A.A. had taken over QANTAS’s domestic routes in Queensland, together with some routes in other states. The standards of flying equipment had kept pace with world standards. T.A.A. was one of the first airlines to order the British Viscount turboprop, starting service on 18 December 1954, but A.N.A. still operated piston-engined Douglas DC-6Bs. This led to a decline in the latter’s fortunes, and on 4 October 1957, it was forced to sell out to Reginald Ansett, whose Ansett Airways had been founded in February 1936, to serve locally in the state of Victoria. Begun modestly with one used aircraft, Ansett’s business acumen now placed him in a position to fulfill more ambitious goals; this included the formation of a group of regional airlines, identified along state lines, to operate as feeder or connecting services to his inter-city network. To set up this system, Ansett initiated what can only be termed a mopping-up operation, for by the early 1960s his Ansett Airlines of Australia had almost cleared the decks of the former regional companies by buying them up.
First to fall was Butler, which had already built a network in new South Wales and southern Queensland, and which was taken over in 1958. On 17 December 1959, the name was changed to Airlines of New South Wales. By this time, earlier in that year, Ansett had acquired Guinea Airways, to cover South Australia, with connections to neighboring states, together with local services in New Guinea. And although a few years were to pass, in April 1963, MacRobertson-Miller, in spite of vigorous opposition from the fiercely independent western Australian state, became Airlines of Western Australia. Curiously, therefore, Australia had at last found itself with a recognizable and clearly identifiable regional airline system; paradoxically they were all owned by one conglomerate, Ansett Transport Industries. Connected by Ansett Airlines of Australia, which was an early purchaser of Boeing 727 and Douglas DC-9 jets during the 1960s, the regionals moved into turboprop twins, primarily the Fokker F-27. They were part of an airline empire, over which Sir Reginald (from 1969) presided until his death on 23 December 1981.
AUSTRALIAN AIRLINES 1920s–1965
By the 20th century, the distinction between regional and mainline, or trunk, airlines had become blurred. The conditions that had spawned them during the formative years of air transport and their maturity after the Second World War has changed. As reviewed at the beginning of this chapter, only the largest countries of the world, by geographical definition and also by financial resources, could sufficiently support regional distinctions to allow the luxury of such airlines. Yet what has happened to the once-promising and once-proud local companies that have not survived developmental challenges?
The story in the United States has been one of competing transport modes and a political transportation policy that could almost have been designed to eliminate regional airline opportunities or aspirations. The post-war neglect of and consequent decline of a passenger railroad system stimulated regional airline growth for a few years. But under President Eisenhower, the initiation of the Interstate Highway construction program on 29 June 1956 was the beginning of the end. As soon as people could drive 100 miles in two hours without traffic lights or intersections, there was little incentive to take an airplane flight. As the highways grew, first the local railroads then the local airlines felt the pinch. Even after expanding into inter-city markets, they sometimes survived by mergers, but their traffic base evaporated and they were ultimately absorbed by the trunk airlines. Today there some 300,000 miles of multi-lane highways in the United States, and very few communities are more than a short driving distance from an interchange with the old roads.
Elsewhere, similar patterns could be discerned, and more recently the innovative high speed railroad systems in eastern Asia and Europe have presented a new challenge, a warning to regional airline entrepreneurs that a new mode of surface transport has emerged to revolutionize inter-city travel. In Japan and western Europe today, the practical possibilities of establishing new regional airlines seem negligible. The initiatives are directed not to geographic identification but to meeting with and generating more air travel by lowering fare levels, a process that has been accelerated by the deregulation of airlines. These 250 kph (150 mph) high speed rail systems all but eliminated many short-haul regional airlines in Japan and western Europe as soon as they opened service. But elsewhere a different approach for local air travel suggested freedom from government control, to encourage initiatives from entrepreneurs, and to allow market forces to determine the need and to guide the solution. Such a policy began in the United States in 1978 and soon spread around the world.