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26.
Evidence was called on behalf of Laker to
show that there was still a shortage of freight capacity on the route. Sir Freddie said in his sub- missions that if licensed he intended to contract out the entire freight capacity of his aircraft to one consolidator. One witness, Mr. W. Blaauw said that, as a large exporter of toys and other products, he would welcome some extra freight capacity and Mr. James Lunn said he found it unsatisfactory that goods were now often sent by air to places such as Luxembourg and then on to their final destination by road or other transport. Mr. Nolan of BA said that in fact the bulk of air freight on the route was carried by air-cargo services such as Cargolux, Air France and also BA with 747 pure cargo configuration. He said it was true that cargo may not go by air all the way to its final destination but the delay was minimal. He denied that there was any shortage of cargo space on the route and said that in any event the addition of the capacity Laker proposed would have very little effect. Mr. Blaauw said he had not approached either BCal or CPA for space (he thought they should approach him) and Mr. Lunn said that his main fear was that there would be a shortage of space in future. Neither could really say there was a shortage at the moment. We accept that, as with passengers, it is probably inevitable that at certain high peak periods, such as just before Christmas, there may be a shortage of air cargo space but that present capacity is sufficient to meet the overall demand. We were also satisfied that Laker's limited cargo capacity would, in any event, not make any significant improvement. Mr. Blaauw also gave evidence relating to low-fare travel by senior executives. We accept that many such executives do travel in economy class but see no evidence that such low-fare seats are not now available on the existing carriers except at peak times.