The views of British Caledonian Airways

Extract

British Caledonian is one of several British privately owned airlines that will be affected in some way or other by Bermuda 2. They will all be affected in different ways and will therefore have different views about the Agreement. This paper represents the views only of British Caledonian.

British Caledonian is the first airline to have taken up any wholly new opportunity offered by Bermuda 2 and has therefore been more affected more quickly by the Agreement than any other airline.

At the same time we have been strongly critical of Bermuda 2. We were opposed to the complete re-negotiation of the old Agreement although we did wish to see major changes, particularly to the route schedules. In general we think the results are disappointing. They fall far short of the British expectations on which the whole British decision to re-negotiate was based. In our view the new Agreement offers no solutions to the sort of problems that have afflicted most North Atlantic operations over a long period of time. Both the UK and the US now believe that many of the changes made to the route schedules could have been secured without renouncing the old Agreement.