AVIATION: A Ghost Walks

The Anglo-American squabble over transatlantic commercial flying was apparently laid to rest last February by the Bermuda air agreement (TIME, Feb.11). But last week its ghost was walking. The Senate’s Commerce Committee held that the agreement was illegal and void. Its reason: the State Department and Civil Aeronautics Board had no right to make international commitments; “such arrangements . . . should be regarded as treaties, subject to ratification by two-thirds vote of the Senate.”

Actually, the Committee, while using this legalism to attack the pact, was also concerned for commercial reasons: 1) the U.S., which will provide 80% of international air travelers, will receive far less than that share of the transport business, and 2) CAB, which has kept U.S. shipping interests out of airlines, would have to give U.S. landing rights to foreign airlines owned or controlled by competing steamship lines. The Committee skipped over what the U.S. had gained, the commercial use of leased British bases, many of which were built with U.S. funds, such as Bermuda’s Kindley Field.

Even CAB no longer seemed satisfied with the workings of the pact’s rate-fixing machinery. The International Air Transport Association had set transatlantic fares at $360, far above the tempting low fares U.S. lines had promised. This revived CAB’s earlier fears that I.A.T.A. was but a well-disguised high-fare cartel. Said CAB Chairman L. Welch Pogue: “It seems incredible that people should get together in a fare conference . . . and that nobody should have made a proposal other than the one actually agreed upon.”

If CAB does not approve the fares set by I.A.T.A., or if the Senate approves the Commerce Committee findings, then transatlantic air carriers may find themselves back where they started from last summer.