Dormant tour snuffed out
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• The North Western Traffic Commissioners on Wednesday refused to grant the continuation of a coach/air Continental tour previously operated by Happiway Tours (Manchester) Ltd. because, said the Chairman, Mr. C. R. Hodgson: "The licence has not been operated for four years and there is no immediate prospect of it being operated now. We must be consistent."
Happiway had operated the tour to Belgium and Holland in 1961 and 1962 but in 1963 the airline with whom it had chartered went bankrupt, which cost the company about £10,000, said Mr. J. A. Backhouse, appearing for the company. In 1964 the tour had only been operated to Italy. During the following three years a road/sea tour was run to Ostend with carryings in 1967 of 1,099 and 720 already booked for this year.
Discussions with another airline were being held now but the firm was hampered by restrictions on its licence confining it to two vehicles which could not be operated elsewhere during the duration of the tour. This meant that planes had to be chartered for specific dates, so the firm was unable to keep an aircraft permanently employed.
Mr. Hodgson said the fact that it had operated the tour previously would be taken into consideration during any new application it might make.
The Commissioners adjourned a further renewal application so that they could go personally to St. Helens to see the alleged traffic congestion caused by coaches operated by Smiths Tours (Wigan) Ltd. picking up tours passengers at 8.15 on a Saturday morning. The Chief Constable of St. Helens sought to move the picking-up point from outside the firm's booking office in what was now a newly-developed shopping centre in Bridge St. to a site in Birchley St. described by Mr. Backhouse, for Smiths, as "a derelict goods yard". Smiths submitted that they had been in Bridge St. since before the Road Traffic Act and the telephone and other conveniences were essential to assembling passengers.