TNAG-0870-FCO40-1080-Air-services-between-Hong-Kong-and-the-UK-1979 — Page 134

CONFIDENTIAL

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

London SW1A 2AH

J R Steele Esq CB Department of Trade 1 Victoria Street London SW1

22 June 1979

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2 6 JUN 1979

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no 18266

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Mer wingy 256

1.

Dear John,

@

Thank you for your letter of 18 June.

I have had the

draft telegram you enclosed despatched. I am however not happy, and I do not believe FCO Ministers here would be happy either, with the prospect of CPA taking their chances at a CAA hearing without anything being done to rectify the bias in the Civil Aviation Act 1971 in favour of UK-based airlines. In your letter you say that your Secretary of State, on the advice of your Solicitor, rejected the idea of giving the CAA a direction to treat CPA on the same basis as the UK airlines concerned. Would it be possible for you to let me have (or your Solicitor might be able to let our Legal Advisers have) a fuller explanation of why this solution would cause difficulty?

. If nothing was done to remedy the bias, I should have thought that public opinion in this country would have sympathy with the inevitable complaints from Hong Kong, if only on the grounds of natural justice.

2.

I am sure you will agree that we should do all we can to avoid an outcome where a second British airline got on the route and CPA did not. From Hong Kong's point of view this could only aggravate the present position.

Jown sincerely

2

Aph

HA H Cortazzi

b.c.c. HKGD

CONFIDENTIAL

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