TNAG-0643-FCO40-791-Involvement-of-Hong-Kong-in-air-services-agreements-1977 — Page 245

amount of friction and discontent among expatriate passengers who have

The economy paid the full (or at any rate somewhat fuller) fare. section of the 3747 can be pretty uncomfortable if it is fully occupied during a long flight with toilet facilities, in particular, which are

The discomforts are barely sufficient to meet the peak demand. accentuated when people of different racial and cultural backgrounds travel cheek by jowl. The carriage of charter traffic (mostly, I believe, arranged by the Hong Kong travel organisation EUFOAIR, whose clients. are nearly all Chinese) inevitably aggravates this problem. On the other hand, there are other considerations which need to be weighed in the balance. It is not conceivable that British Airways would be able to maintain their present frequency of scheduled services between London and Hong Kong if a significant part of the traffic on which those services depends were to be syphoned off on to separate charter flights. Your colleagues' recent reaction to the proposed reduction in the frequency of scheduled services between Frankfurt and Hong Kong (which, surprisingly enough, is higher than the frequency of services with traffic rights between London and Hong Kong) suggests that a reduction in the frequency of BA's services on the London- And it would also be Hong Kong route would be unwelcome to you. unwelcome to us.

Where the balance should be struck is an extremely difficult question. As you will no doubt recall, I have myself suggested in the past that British Airways may well have cut their fares a bit too low on this route and are thus obliged to operate at a higher load factor than

But now would otherwise be desirable, in order to run at a profit. that they have got into this situation with Government approval I recognise the difficulty of getting out of it by reducing seat factors and raising prices.

My purpose in writing to you is therefore not to suggest any cut and dried solution but rather to counsel the most extreme caution in changing the present situation - even if you were to discover that you would be within your legal rights in so doing.

I suggest that this is one of the questions which we might put on the list for my next visit to Hong Kong - which I hope will be after our negotiations with the Thais in October.

/While