Registry
No.
ECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret,
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted.
Unclassified.
RIVACY MARKING
CONFIDENTIAL
DSR 11
DRAFT
To:-
C W Roberts Esq
Department of Trade
Type 1 +
From
Mr Gertazzi
Mumay
Telephone No. Ext.
Department
In Confidence
I'm
on leave!
I am replying to
AIR SERVICES ON THE LONDON HONG KONG ROUTE Hugh Cortazze's absence 1. Thank you for your letter of 3 August. In my view it would
be much more equitable and much less likely to give rise to misunderstandins and resentmentif all the airlines concerned
in this particular application wereto be treated by Cââ on an equal footing. If this is not done the authorities in Hong Kong are bound to regard any decision unfavourable to CPA as highly suspect.I accept, however, that there are
doubts about the propriety of a direction to CAA on this point and that any intervention of this kind by your Minister would be open to challenge in the courts. As you are proposing in any case to amend Section 3 of the Civil Aviation
Act we considered whether these difficulties could be
overcome by an amendment to the definition of British airline. I accept however that this would have far reaching effects and be difficult to justify while CAA has no substantial jurisdiction in Hong Kong or over Hong Kong
aircraft.
2 In these circumstances it is particularly important to
assure the Hong Kong authorities that any bias they may fear in the CAA procedures can be corrected and that they will not be faced with the argument, if the CAA decision happens to go against CPA, that because all the statutory procedures have been satisfied there are no grounds for your Minister
to vary the decision. We are not of course asking for a guarantee that a CPA will be given a licence. It would however be helpful to have an assurance that your Minister does not rule out the possibility of varying the CAA decision if this is the only way of ensuring fair treatment for CPA and that he recognises the need to take Hong Kong's interests and the future of our relations with the territory into account in any decision he may come to. It is not enough to tell the Hong Kong
Dd 0532000 800M 5/78 HMSO Bracknell