and the parking concessions. You will notice that our study examines every little possible source of income to every airport, and tries to indicate how cities can develop other sources of income, because it is generally conceded that the landing fees, which are very nominal now, you would have to double them and triple them and probably even more than that, to meet city airport budgets.

That is the reason for considering gasoline, where they come in and use the city airport as their filling station, and they use all of the airport's facilities and park on the ramp and create quite a fire hazard, and other things; there is quite an argument, as you will see developed in our study, there back of the idea of a gallonage fee, which we recommend in our final draft of the model air-line agreement.

Mr. HESELTON. It might be appropriate to quote another paragraph of this work of yours, Mr. Rhyne, after hearing you tell about the experts ganging up on the local officials, when you say, at page 13:

Some NIMLO members feel strongly that this unified front of the air lines to force an equal rather than a competitive agreement is a conspiracy in restraint of trade and is in violation of the antitrust laws.

Mr. RHYNE. I might say that they feel, in words that I could not express in print, that they very definitely come off second-best in trying to meet these air lines and discuss this landing-fee system with them. That is the reason they think that they have to tap all of these other sources of income. Of course, gasoline happens to be one of the most lucrative of all sources.

Mr. HESELTON, Looking at it from a long-range point of view, and I have in mind a point in your testimony, Colonel Kelly, that Í think is very significant, where you said—

City officials and city taxpayers have begun to look at operation deficits at airports with a most critical eye.

and you might add Federal Taxpayers and Congressmen do that, I am sure.

They are wondering how scheduled air lines can spend millions of dollars for advertising, the most expensive ticketing procedure in the world, and other luxuries, yet spend less than 1 percent of their total revenues on their most essential facility-the airport.

That strikes me as an extremely significant point, and I think perhaps you might care, for the record, to set that out in dollars and cents, if it is easily available, so that we could just see the figures in front of us: But that is just a suggestion, and if it is available in the book we will find them there

Colonel KELLY. They are in the book.

Mr. HESELTON. What I am getting at was from the long-range point of view, to help the industry, one that is operating to its greatest extent, should not the air lines think at least on the side of those who are operating these various essential airport facilities, trying to operate them at their maximum and at their best, and foresee the time when, if they can only get themselves onto a self-sustaining basis and if this traffic increases as all of us think it will, both passengerwise and freightwise, that it would all redound to their benefit? It could be the possibility of even reducing the charges to the air lines if you could only be given a little encouragement to try to put your ports on a sound and businesslike basis.

Colonel KELLY. I agree with you, Mr. Congressman. I think the air lines should make greater efforts to cooperate with the cities so that

the cities wouldn't always be operating the most essential facility the air lines need, to operate it in the red.

Mr. HESELTON. I do not like to keep bringing up this question of the case that I know of too frequently, but let me venture the prediction that it is entirely possible that the air line resistance and the CAA resistance to some reasonable and common-sense settlement of this situation at the Logan International Airport might just very well result in the taxpayers of Massachusetts and the Legislature of Massachusetts throwing their hands up and saying, "If an agency of the Federal Government sees fit to so interpret a congressional act, our Governor and our entire council" and, after I get through this, I am going to put the resolution in here-"and our legislature and our municipal and State authorities all agree, if they are going to set their judgment up as to what the correct and common-sense interpretation of that legislative or congressional intent is, they might find themselves up against this sort of a situation," and I do not think that they would like it-today in Massachusetts, there are refunds on aviation gasoline taxes, and if the people of Massachusetts get thoroughly fed up with this thing, they may well find themselves with a tax on aviation gasoline, and you know as well as I do that once you get that sort of tax on, it is pretty hard to get it off.

In other words, there are two sides to this whole question, and I do not think enough attention has been paid to the ideas of the sovereign States.

After all, there still is a theory that some of us hold that the States of this country are better able to work out their local problems in cooperation with Federal agencies than they are to be told by Federal agencies what they are going to do.

I want to ask you one more question, and then I must suspend. The committee has been very fair with me on this. This goes to the author of the book, because I assume it is coming up before we get through these hearings. I want to quote another paragraph on page 27, which should be in the record, I think:

Charged with the administration of that act was the Civil Aeronautics Administration. From the very outset, it was apparent that that agency was going to misinterpret, twist, and torture the real sense of the Federal Airport Act into something which suited the CAA's own internal pleasure and which would only have the result of impeding and hampering the accomplishment of the real purposes of the act.

That, as you said before, was the advancement of civil aviation in this country. I said what several other Members of Congress have been saying about their interpretation of the administration of the Civil Aeronautics Act, and I think that we have several very decidedly interesting illustrations of that coming into these hearings. Can you tell me as to any particular airport of which you have specific knowledge of I corfess that I may have missed that

Colonel KELLY. You mean as regards gasoline? The Detroit Municipal Airport is in bad shape. The air lines are out at Willow Run Airport now, so that Detroit is not a good example.

Mr. HESELTON. What, in general, is the situation?

Colonel KELLY. Here is the city of Fort Worth, on page 82, that might give you an illustration.

Mr. HESELTON. Let me ask you this: Perhaps it is the position of the chairman of the committee on airports of the National Institute

of Municipal Law Officers to present figures, or are there any in this book, which show what the earnings of the oil companies are at the airports around this country?

Mr. RHYNE. Not their earnings, not the earnings of the oil companies. We have collected the figures on landing fees and on hangar fees and on the earnings of certain cities that sell gasoline themselves, but not the oil companies. We had no way of getting that information. Mr. HESELTON. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOLLIVER. Are there any other questions?

Mr. BUSBEY. Mr. Kelly, at this conference was the subject of trying to determine a uniform schedule of landing fees taken up?

Mr. RHYNE. Well, I think that all of those at the conference generally conceded that a uniform schedule of landing fees is practically impossible. It must vary from city to city, and from airport to airport, and it must be based to some degree upon what the air lines receive in the various cities.

Now, if you will notice, there is, in the information we have collected on 110 cities, some uniformity now, but nothing that you could say that would be an absolute uniformity, so much for the first landing and so much for the second, and it varies from city to city. It has always been a matter of bargaining, and there are so many factors that enter into it that I believe it would be rather hard to work out. Mr. BUSBEY. I may have misunderstood your testimony in regard to the airport at Richmond, Va., that you were speaking of.

Mr. RHYNE. I was just using them merely as an illustration.

Mr. BUSBEY. I seem to have gotten the idea that there was not a great deal of differentiation in the landing fee between one plane and 50 planes down there.

Mr. RHYNE. I did not mean that.

Mr. BUSBEY. I am sure that you did not want that impression to remain.

Mr. RHYNE. What I mean is that the city receives the same amount, say, from American Air Lines as it does from Eastern, although American may only land one airplane in there a day and Eastern may land 50 a day. The first initial amount, say if it is $200 for the first scheduled landing, or something like that, American pays $200 and Eastern pays $200, and then it is scaled down; and the idea of city officials is that Eastern, which has a bigger stake in a certain airport because it uses it more, should pay more to help support the airport, where the air line that comes in only once naturally wouldn't want to pay so much. They could deal with the individual air lines instead of having to treat them all the same; they would prefer that.

Mr. BUSBEY. How do they arrive at the passenger fare, for instance, between here and Chicago? I am more familiar with the flight there because I commute every week or so. You can take American Air Line; a flight may land at Cincinnati and Indianapolis, between here and Chicago. Another air line may have a nonstop flight from here to Chicago.

Now, will they get together and will the fare be the same, regardless of how many landings take place?

Mr. RHYNE. I believe that that is true.

Mr. BUSBEY. If you get on a nonstop, you

Mr. RHYNE. You pay the same amount.

Mr. BUSBEY. You do not get any benefit in the price that you pay

for the ticket, notwithstanding the fact if you take another plane that makes two or three stops between here and Chicago they have to pay landing fees that will cost them more to transport you; is that right?

Mr. RHYNE. Of course, they have the advantage of letting passengers on and off. Everyone does not want to fly nonstop. Some people only want to go to Cincinnati, and then they can take on more people to go to Chicago. I guess it probably evens itself out in the long run.

Mr. BUSBEY. I would like to ask Colonel Kelly if this does not resolve itself into a problem of which can do a better job of cutting down the deficits, the municipally owned airports or the air lines?

Colonel KELLY. Of course, they both have got to do it somehow or other, very soon. As to the cities, we hear from the chambers of commerce and organizations of taxpayers, every time the budget comes up, that the airport is one of the things that sticks up like a sore thumb. In our city we have another problem, because the air lines all land at another airport; but for your information, and if you want to take the time to check it, beginning on page 48 of Mr. Rhyne's study there is a list of the airports and the landing fees charged at every one of them. Those are all that are available. I suppose that there are other airports besides those.

Also, beginning on page 65, there is a list of other airport revenues from a rental of office space, hangar charges, aircraft storage, and the like. And then, as I started to say a moment ago, on page 82 there are figures of certain cities showing experience they have had, and the cities that are operating their airports at a profit because of the revenues received from gasoline.

Mr. HESELTON. Čolonel Kelly, Mr. Busbey suggested this thought in my mind: If this bill became law and the prohibition was in there against any charges or fees or taxes of any kind, would there not be a very real possibility, and I think it has been suggested by the gentleman from Texas this morning, that not only some of these airports and their managements who now are aware of what might happen, but a great many more around the country who are not even aware of the pendency of this bill, would find themselves confronted with very serious financial situations, in that they might be utterly unable to carry out their bonded debt requirements as far as these airports are concerned?

Colonel KELLY. That is very possible, Mr. Congressman, and they would probably have to refuse to accept Federal funds and operate on their own revenues.

Mr. HESELTON. If that is so, it seems to me that it might be well for CAA, instead of forcing this thing at gun point on anybody-and there is some possibility of determining an alternative system, such as suggested this morning, which you now pretty well have exploded, in describing the opposition of the air lines to the development of any such system the wiser thing to have done, whether they have a right under the law or not, would have been to explore with the air lines the possibility of the air lines accepting an alternate, before they come cracking down on any community or any State and saying, "Here, you have to get rid of something that you are using, and we have no alternative to offer."

Colonel KELLY. I think that that is probably true, sir.

Mr. DOLLIVER. We are going to attempt to close these hearings

this afternoon, and I hope that the committee will bear in mind that we do have a number of witnesses, some of whom must get away this afternoon.

I notice Congressman Muhlenberg is in the room. Congressman Muhlenberg, of Pennsylvania.

STATEMENT OF HON. FREDERICK A. MUHLENBERG, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. MUHLENBERG. My name is Frederick A. Muhlenberg, and I am Congressman from the Thirteenth District of Pennsylvania, which has within it the airport at Reading, Pa.

I did not expect, Mr. Chairman, to say anything at all today before your committee, and I will try to be brief, but it seems to me that it is important for me to register, as a former city official and as a former early designer on the airport that we have there, the concern of a former city official in legislation of this type.

I seriously believe that it involves a very dangerous principle, and one that should not be adopted by the Congress as representing the thought of the Congress in the approach to the question of how airports should be managed.

First of all, I do believe, as a city official, former city official, that it is necessary that the city officials be allowed to conduct their own enterprises in such a way as to make the enterprise successful; and secondly, I do believe that the principle of national legislation encroaching on local fields brings us into questions that ought to be handled with very great reserve.

I believe the idea that the National Government shall say to a carrier that it can supersede and make ineffective State legislation, too, involves a dangerous principle.

I do believe, therefore, that it is very much wiser that a bill of this nature be not approved by the committee, and be not even brought before the Congress for its consideration.

I think that that is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DOLLIVER. The next witness is Mr. Sumner W. Elton, the assistant attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Department of Public Works, Boston, Mass.

STATEMENT OF SUMNER W. ELTON, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS, BOSTON, MASS.

Mr. ELTON. Mr. Chairman, the Massachusetts Department of Public Works in Massachusetts is charged with the rehabilitation, expansion, and management of General Edward Lawrence Logan Airport, the only major terminal airport.in the State.

Logan Airport is one of very, very few major airports in the United States operated by a State government. Massachusetts early recognized the need for a public airport, and in 1913 established an airplane landing field near Jefferies Point.

In 1928 the city of Boston requested and received the right to develop and operate this landing field as a modern airport, and with the