Word: braniff
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...American Airway Corp.'s protest to C.A.B. on transatlantic competition (see above) was not matched by its rough-&-tumble row with a competitor in Mexico. The competitor: Aerovias Braniff, S.A., affiliate of the U.S.'s Braniff Airways Inc. (TIME, April 16). The battleground: the route from Mexico City to Merida via Vera Cruz, where Braniff made its first flight on July...
...this route Braniff paralleled a service long operated by Pan Am's Mexican subsidiary, Compañia Mexicana de Aviacion, S.A., which protested loudly against the operating permit granted to Braniff by the Minister of Communications. When protests failed, C.M.A. resorted to deeds. The resulting intercompany battle that marked the first round-trip Braniff flight from Mexico City to Merida was in the best swashbuckling tradition of business below the border...
Rough Flights. At Merida, a cavalcade of automobiles carrying a welcoming committee of local bigwigs was ignobly stopped at the airport gates. Armed guards once warned Braniff employes that they would be arrested for trespassing if they attempted to enter the field to service their plane. At Vera Cruz, where a Braniff plane arrived after dark, C.M.A. fieldmen refused to switch on the landing lights. At both Merida and Vera Cruz, Braniff passengers were forced to use the planes' cargo boxes in place of landing stages. They toted their own baggage, picked their way through barbed-wire fences...
Last week Braniff doggedly brought into the open the vital question: who owns and controls international airports in the Western Hemisphere? Cried Braniff Vice President Douglas Stockdale: "These airports were built as military bases for continental defense under the lend-lease laws of the United States. . . . They are considered by the military authorities of Mexico as property of the Government and neither can nor should be considered as exclusive property of C.M.A...
When new planes are available, Aerovias has ambitious plans for expansion. In addition to more routes in Mexico, the Mexican flag line expects to push south to Panama. It will also ask the Civil Aeronautics Board for permission to land at Miami and Los Angeles. How much more Braniff will get in its own country, to add to its well-fed inland service, Braniff Airways, Inc. could predict no more accurately than the dozens of other U.S. lines ascramble for new routes. But one thing was certain: Braniff's Mexican cousin had its start, was in competition in Mexico...