Airline Pilots Ass’n Joins World Transport Workers to Battle Hijacking

Leaders of 46,000 airline pilots in 55 countries said in a statement here today that they had decided “to coordinate their activities with the International Transport Workers Federation against all forms of violence in civil aviation.” Capt. Ola Forsberg of Finland, president of the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations (IFALPA), made the statement after a special session of the group here yesterday, a continuation of a meeting held in London last week. The session was attended by IFALPA top officers from Britain, Italy, France, the United States, Austria, Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands. The statement said that the problem of the hijacked hostages still being held in Jordan “by the Palestinian guerrillas” was “so delicate” that IFALPA was refraining from comment “at this time,” but it added that it was making the statement today on the joint action with the Transport workers as a further means of ending hijackings and airborne violence.”

Charles M. Blyth of London, ITF general secretary, appeared with Capt. Forsberg and “underlined the mutual Interests of the quarter-million transport workers in ending air piracy throughout the world.” The two officers also said that “on the Immediate problem, that of the hostages, the matter is in the hands of governments. IFALPA is not involved in these very delicate contacts and consequently refrains from comment in order not to run any risks of jeopardizing the situation.” C.C. Jackson of London, IFALPA, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the organization “embraces all known pilot groups free to join an international organization without objections from their governments.” He said that IFALPA now numbers pilots associations in 55 countries as “full members” and that they included Lebanon, Egypt and the Sudan. He said representatives of pilots in the Soviet Union, Poland and Yugoslavia have attended IFALPA annual meetings “occasionally as observers.”