Under the Civil Aviation Act there is a responsibility on the Airways Corporations to establish machinery for the determination of terms and conditions of employment and consultation with the staff they employ. There is, equally, a responsibility upon the Boards of the Corporations to recognise those unions who are appropriate to the grades of staff they employ.

The machinery, which was created in 1949, was based on the concept of Whitleyism but its application had to be rather wider than was the case in other industries because:

• (i) Civil aviation was in its infancy at the time

• (ii) The formidable task of bringing together a wide variety of skills

• (iii) The problems of adjusting to the varying practices and philosophies of unions catering for a wide variety of occupational groups.