Midland Red wins service for stranded passengers
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• Mystery surrounded certain points about two applications concerning licences for operators carrying stranded passengers from Birmingham's Elmdon airport, says a written decision of the West Midlands Traffic Commissioners published this week.
A licence for this work was granted in November last year to Allenways, Flights Tours, Claribel Coaches and Harborne Motor Services. The application was opposed by Midland Red. In June of this year the Commissioners heard an application by Midland Red for an express service licence to provide facilities for passengers stranded at the airport by weather conditions and so on. It was opposed by Allenways, Flights and Claribel.
At the second hearing the Commissioners established that the traffic was shared by Allenways and Midland Red until the end of 1969 when Flights had entered the scene and taken an increasing share of the business, chiefly at the expense of Midland Red. From November last year BEA traffic had been carried by Allenways and BMA by Flights, in both cases with interhiring. Both Allenways and Flights had operated without road service licences and Midland Red's licence appeared inadequate for the work involved.
The two points which the Commissioners found so mysterious were why all parties were suddenly so anxious to obtain licences when all of them had been carrying the traffic "quite happily for varying periods of time and to a varying extent without a licence and with no apparent sense of guilt", and why those operators who were not carrying all the traffic should oppose an application by another operator who, they claimed, had lost the business because of poor service and who would not regain it because they could not provide proper facilities.
The Commissioners had "no doubt" about granting the licence as requested by Midland Red. Among their reasons for the decision, the Commissioners said that they were unlikely to grant a licence to any other operator.