800.796/8–645
The Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board (Pogue) to the Director of the Office of Transport and Communications Policy (Taft)
My Dear Mr. Taft: As we suggested at our recent luncheon meeting, we feel that it is now advisable to reexamine this Government’s position with respect to the International Air Transport Agreement adopted for signature at Chicago.
[Page 1467]To date, as we are informed, only nine nations have accepted the Air Transport Agreement and of these only the United States, China, the Netherlands and Turkey can be classed as nations of first importance in international air transportation. There can, of course, be no assurance that additional nations will accept the agreement. In the meantime you have, of course, been endeavoring to secure bilateral agreements with those other countries where we desire air transport rights. At this moment it seems evident that we should rely for the immediate future upon bilateral agreements and not upon the Transport Agreement. We believe that this is your view as it is ours.
It appears that the Transport Agreement is ambiguous in certain important respects. This is particularly true with reference to the question of whether more than one route is available to the airlines of one signatory for operation to the territory of another. Furthermore, the Transport Agreement contains an “ownership” provision (Article 1, Section 5) which may be too liberal for the taste of some nations. There are other provisions of the Transport Agreement which are not wholly satisfactory. All of these defects taken together, coupled with the very limited acceptance of the agreement to date, have caused us to come to the conclusion that in general this Government should adopt the position that our foreign operating rights should be secured under bilateral agreements. Under such agreements various matters which are ambiguous in the Transport Agreement can be made perfectly clear.
If the Department agrees with this position, it will logically follow that, in addition to bilateral agreements being negotiated with countries which have not signed the Transport Agreement, we should attempt to secure bilateral agreements with those countries which have not accepted, even though they signed the Transport Agreement in all cases where we want air transport rights therein. We hope that the Department will agree with us that this course of action should be followed.
With respect to the countries which have accepted the International Air Transport Agreement we are somewhat concerned over the possibility of misunderstanding which might occur in connection with the question of whether it authorizes the operation of more than one route out from and back to the homeland of each signatory. For example, if the Netherlands should construe this provision of the agreement liberally and should apply under Section 402 of the Civil Aeronautics Act for a permit to operate two direct routes from the Netherlands to this country, much ill will might result if this Government, without having given prior notice, took the position that the agreement authorizes only one such route. One way to minimize the possibility of such a misunderstanding would be to announce to the world at large [Page 1468] at this time what this Government’s construction of the agreement may be. Another alternative is the resolution of all problems in the International Air Transport Agreement through the present negotiation of a standard form bilateral agreement with the Dutch which would supersede the multilateral agreement as between the Dutch and ourselves and specifically define the terms of our air transport relationship. We believe this course to be the desirable one in the case of each country which has accepted the Transport Agreement. We suggest that it will be advisable to negotiate such a bilateral agreement with the Netherlands and also with El Salvador at the present time and at a later date with China and the other signatories of the International Air Transport Agreement if it should seem likely that these other nations will wish to designate airlines to operate into the United States.
We will appreciate it if the Department will furnish us with its views on the above matters. If the Department should agree with our conclusions we will immediately prepare the necessary annexes to be attached to the standard form bilateral agreement for negotiation with the governments of the countries referred to.
Sincerely yours,