800.796/10–1844: Telegram
The Ambassador in the United Kingdom (Winant) to the Secretary of State
[Received October 19—3:44 p.m.]
8911. There has been an increasing uneasiness in aviation circles that the fundamental difference of opinion between the United States and Great Britain in the degree of economic control over routes and frequencies to be entrusted to an international authority will cause a major and serious split between the United States and Great Britain at the Chicago conference. These persons feel that the British Government or, more specifically, those having to do with civil air policy do not fully appreciate the force of the desires of the United States to fly, and the political repercussions in the United States and on third countries, of a situation arising in which it might appear that Great Britain was preventing the United States from flying into its territory, or otherwise preventing the United States from a reasonable and full development of its international civil aviation. This is in spite of a general supposition that Mr. Churchill was advised at Quebec that one of the few things the United States wanted out of the war was the right to fly anywhere.
Hildred, who appreciates the position of the United States as well as his own country’s, says he will present to Lord Swinton, when the latter returns about October 22, as a possible compromise, the following rough plan:
Each country operating on a route would be guaranteed the right to operate an agreed upon minimum number of frequencies and would be permitted to subsidize this minimum number to any extent it chose. Each country could only increase this number of frequencies by withdrawing all subsidy both for the original frequencies and the additional ones. Those efficient nations operating a route at a profit could fly as many frequencies on it as they chose, while less efficient nations would be assured that they could operate the minimum schedule agreed to, regardless of what it cost them. Presumably this principle might be agreed upon multilaterally, but the final determination of the routes and the number of frequencies on them considered an adequate minimum for each country might be done bilaterally. This arrangement would presuppose some control of minimum rates and machinery for their prompt adjustment to actual costs of the most efficient operator. It also assumes it is possible to reach an agreement on what is a subsidy. There is a good deal of belief here in [Page 562] private aviation circles that some such arrangement ought to be acceptable in principle to those whose advocacy of tight controls is not motivated by a desire to hold U.S. aviation back, but by a recognition that some protection is needed if they are not to be pushed out of the air entirely by the United States.
Parrish’s editorial in the October 1 Aviation Daily has received wide attention in aviation circles, and is taken to be pretty close to the official U.S. position.