The views of the regulatory authority

Extract

The first point which must be made—and I may not be the only speaker today who will make it—is that there is nothing new in a low air fares policy, at least so far as the United Kingdom is concerned. During the 1950s British independent airlines pioneered low fare scheduled services to Africa—the ‘colonial coach’ services. Much of the expansion in air travel that occurred between the United Kingdom and Europe and on the North Atlantic in the 1960s was due to the availability of low fares on charter services. Control over the minimum prices of inclusive tour holidays in Europe was finally suspended by the United Kingdom in 1972. In the same year, Edward Heath, addressing the Annual General Meeting of IATA in London, bluntly warned the scheduled airlines of the world that if they did not cater for the mass travel market by offering low fares, Governments would make sure that somebody else did. In the same year Laker Airways was licensed to operate a Skytrain service to New York—a scheduled service geared specifically to a low fares policy.