TNAG-0779-FCO40-983-Involvement-of-Hong-Kong-in-air-services-agreements-1978 — Page 110

with

ujuft

Begant

~ may,

CAX

survive on the end to end traffic.

The Australians had not thought

about this and possible solutions were tentatively discussed. One of them, a two-leg journey of UK-Singapore by Concorde and Australia-Singapore feeder service is brought into doubt, because the Australian proposals would reduce the services between Australia

and Singapore.

A further difficulty is that Qantas are not

enthusiastic about operating a Concorde service and, in the circumstances, BA would apparently not find it economically acceptable to operate it alone. We want to keep open the option, however, and

are therefore pressing for a Concorde service to be kept outside

the proposed new arrangements.

(iii) New Zealand

11 We said that services between the UK and New Zealand posed a special problem for us. There were strong political reasons for our wanting to continue the BA services between the UK and

New Zealand. There was not however sufficient end to end traffic which chose to use the BA service to make such a service viable

without combination with UK-Australia Services.

If the BA service

were to cease much of the New Zealand-UK low fare traffic would filter through Australia to take advantage of the new low fares between Australia and the UK. This would produce an unfavourable reaction in New Zealand. The Australians accepted that there was a problem here to which they would give further consideration.

(iv) Laker

12 The implications of the Australian proposals for Laker Airways are that it would not be possible for them to operate the charter service for which they have made formal application to the CAA.

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