Fittipaldi stable with broken back
 2-time Indy champ to fly to Miami Tuesday for possible surgery
     SAO PAULO, Brazil - Sept. 8, 1997 -- Racing champion Emerson
 Fittipaldi fractured his lower back when the ultralight plane he
 was piloting from his family citrus farm plunged 300 feet (90
 meters) into a swamp.
     The 50-year-old racer, one of Brazil's most revered athletes
 and a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner, was in stable condition
 Monday but may need surgery. His 6-year-old son, Luca, the only
 other person in the plane, received minor scratches.
     The ultralight plane crashed Sunday in Araraquara, a citrus-
 growing region 220 miles (350 kilometers) northwest of Sao Paulo.
     Fittipaldi told doctors the plane's motor stalled, said Dr.
 Luiz Roberto Neves, clinical director at Sao Paulo Hospital in
 Araraquara.   "It wasn't a forced landing. It was a crash," Neves
 said. "The swamp saved them. If they had fallen on solid ground,
 they surely would have been killed."
     Fittipaldi and his son took off in the morning from Araraquara.
 When they failed to return by nightfall, police were called and a
 massive search began. The two were found late Sunday night and
 taken to the hospital, where doctors immobilized Fittipaldi's neck.
     The hospital's neurosurgeon, Dr. Joao Capellari, said Fittipaldi
 fractured the second vertebra in the lumbar region.
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     LISBON, Portugal - Sept. 8, 1997 -- The board of Portuguese
 state-owned airline TAP-Air Portugal and the pilots' union have
 reached a deal on productivity, putting an end to a series of
 strikes this year, TAP's chairman Manuel Ferreira Lima said on
 Monday.
     Ferreira Lima also told reporters that the airline, which has
 made losses for two decades, would post a profit this year despite
 the pilots' strikes over the organization of working hours.
     "It was not the agreement that we wanted to sign, nor was it
 the agreement that the pilots' union would want. But it was a good
 agreement," Ferreira Lima said. "Despite the losses incurred by the
 strikes, TAP has prospects to present a profit at the end of the
 year," he added. Ferreira Lima said TAP would pay the pilots 360
 million escudos (almost US$2 million) in compensation for unpaid
 overtime this year.
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 Pact would remove one hurdle to proposed British Air, American merger
     WASHINGTON - September 8, 1997 -- U.S. Transportation Secretary
 Rodney Slater said in an interview published Monday that he expected
 to seal a liberal air agreement with Britain by the end of the year.
 "I know it's optimistic but I think we can get closure by the end of
 the year," Slater was quoted as telling the Journal of Commerce.
     An "open skies" pact with Britain is a necessary requirement for
 the go-ahead for the proposed alliance between British Airways and
 AMR Corp.'s American Airlines.
     However, department officials said there were still no dates for
 a resumption of aviation talks with Britain. In addition, the De-
 partment of Transportation plans to hold hearings on the BA-American
 pact.
     In an order issued Friday, the department set out a timetable
 for reviewing the BA-American plans. The order asks for more details
 and then sets in motion a comment period lasting nearly two months.
 The hearings will be held sometime after that comment period ends, a
 department spokesman said.
     BA and American announced their alliance plans in June 1996 but
 have faced loud protests from rival airlines and a lengthy decision-
 making process in the United States and Europe.
     British Airways chief executive Robert Ayling made a fresh
 attack on the European Union Monday, criticizing its delays in eval-
 uating the proposed alliance.
     Ayling told members of the American Society of Travel Agents
 (ASTA) that the BA/American deal had been subjected to unfair delays
 by the European Union's competition authorities when rival alliances
 had been allowed to take off without questioning.
     "Other alliances are now roaring ahead while ours is in a per-
 petual holding pattern above Brussels as the bureaucrats grind over
 detail gone over so many times before," he told ASTA's annual
 conference.
     "We accepted creating an alliance between our two companies was
 not going to be easy," he said. "But we are not asking for a position
 of privilege. Rather it is the opportunity to grow, grow to the ex-
 tent that we can satisfy our customers," he said.
     Ayling urged U.S. travel agents to lobby for the deal to go ahead
 because, he said, approval would require an Anglo-U.S. "open skies"
 aviation trade pact to create more competition, not less, on routes
 between the United States and London's Heathrow airport.
     "The negotiation of this agreement and the approval of the alli-
 ance are inextricably linked," he said. "It is what makes the
 alliance uniquely competitive."
     "The U.S. government has made it a requirement that it will only
 be approved if the UK government agrees to an open skies agreement
 that will open up Heathrow to more U.S. carriers," he said.
     Under the current Bermuda II pact between Britain and the United
 States, only BA, American, United Airlines and Virgin Atlantic Air-
 ways can operate trans-Atlantic services at Heathrow.
      First, however, BA and American have to get the alliance
 cleared by the European competition authorities and are due to
 resume negotiations later this month with the European Commission,
 which has been investigating the deal for more than a year.
     But last Friday BA and American formally rejected proposals made
 by the Commission's competition directorate for concessions to be
 made if the deal was to be approved, including a demand that they
 give up some 350 weekly take off and landing slots at Heathrow's
 two congested runways to make room for more competition.
     The two airlines have already threatened to drop the deal and
 with it the prospects of liberalizing the Bermuda II aviation trade
 pact with an open skies deal if they are called on to surrender more
 than the 168 weekly slots at Heathrow demanded by the British
 authorities.
--- DB 1.39/004487
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