Flare-Up in Mexico

Pan 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 1.

On this route Braniff paralleled a service long operated by Pan Am's Mexican subsidiary, Compania 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 to enter the fields. C.M.A. parked trucks around a Braniff plane to prevent it from taking off (see cut).

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."

Showdown. At week's end, embattled Tom Braniff saw relief in sight. The Mexican Minister of Communications ordered C.M.A. to open all its airport facilities. He ruled that the fields should be considered public property, exclusive to no one. Fighting Tom Braniff had won an important point--at least for the moment.

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