Long Trip, Short Meeting

In Manhattan's Hotel Lexington, representatives of ten airlines from eight different countries gathered. It was the first meeting of the North Atlantic Conference of the International Air Transport Association. Some of the airmen had traveled over 4,000 miles to attend this long-awaited meeting to fix minimum Atlantic fares. It lasted just five minutes. Reason: the Civil Aeronautics Board had not granted U.S. airlines permission to participate.

The evening before the conference, CAB announced that it had deferred all consideration of the question. CAB gave as the reason the fact that representatives of the U.S. State Department, CAB and Britian are meeting this week in Bermuda to discuss a bilateral air agreement.

If the U.S. and Britain can come to an agreement, it will settle the current squabble over how North Atlantic rates should 36 set. It will also set a pattern for the Morth Atlantic Conference to follow when t meets again Feb. 1, probably in Manhattan.

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