Category AVIATION &ТНЕ ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

For the first time, the Aero Club of New York had been invited to attend, and in response to invitations from the exhibits committee, the leading lights of the aeronautical world, includ­ing Chanute, Langley, and Baldwin provided displays. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor

of the telephone, was also there exhibiting his “tetrahedral kite,” a strange-looking contrap­tion that he believed provided a means of lift. Although invited, the Wright brothers declined to attend, saying “It would interfere with our plans if we should make public at once a description of our machine and methods.”1

Bell visited the Curtiss exhibit (see Figure 8-2), and came away convinced that Curtiss was the greatest motor expert in the country. Curtiss was a practical, down-to-earth kind of man. Although intrigued by his experiences with Baldwin and oth­ers whom he had met in the aeronautical groups, he was not altogether convinced that winged flight was to be a practical reality. But Dr. Bell was practical, and he was a proven commodity—his reputation was fully established. Bell’s enthusiasm rubbed off on Curtiss, so a correspondence relationship between the two was established based on the idea that manned, controlled flight of an airplane was possible.

Curtiss wrote to the Wright brothers in May 1906, inquiring of their interest in his engines. The Wrights were not interested, but in September that year Curtiss was in Day­ton at the behest of Baldwin in order to make repairs to a Curtiss engine being used on a

Baldwin dirigible. Baldwin, as a well-known aeronaut, knew the Wrights and introduced Cur­tiss to them. Curtiss was able to discuss with them their flying machine progress in some detail, and they showed him photographs of their machine in flight taken during the previous two years at Huffman Prairie. Although Curtiss remarked that it was the first time he had been able to believe that manned flight was possible, no one of any recognized credibility had ever actually seen the Wrights in the air. Although Baldwin would later say that Curtiss never had any thought at this time of taking up flying, it is reasonable to think that this visit with the Wrights might have combined with the Bell relationship to ignite that very interest.2

In October that year, Alberto Santos – Dumont made the first public airplane flight in the world in Paris. His 14-bis flew a distance of 200 feet at a height of 10 feet at 25 miles per hour. Spurred on by these developments and his own long-standing belief and commitment to flight, Bell bought one of the Curtiss engines and asked Curtiss to deliver it, in person, to Bell’s Nova Scotia home. He said he would pay Curtiss a consulting fee of $25 per day, plus expenses. He also invited Curtiss to join a small group of
men dedicated to finding a practical solution to the problems of flight. They agreed to meet at the Bell estate on Cape Breton Island in July 1907.

Bell had arranged to have the other members of his proposed investigative group at his house at the same time; there were Douglas McCurdy and Casey Baldwin, both recent graduates of the University of Toronto with master’s degrees in engineering, and Lt. Thomas Selfridge, whom we discovered in Chapter 7. Selfridge was a military expert in gliders and aeronautics and, like Cur­tiss, had some prior acquaintance with the Wright brothers. The group spent the next week at the Bell estate, becoming acquainted and discussing a wide range of issues relating to the scientific and engineering aspects of the problem of flight. General concepts of the operation and funding of the proposed undertaking were laid out by Dr. Bell. When he left at the end of the week, Curtiss came away favorably impressed with the great enthusiasm exhibited by the 60-year-old Bell, and with the way in which each man’s talent and experience complemented that of the others.

Details of the undertaking were worked out on a subsequent visit to the Bell house in September 1907. The group, known as the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), was formally established on the next visit in October 1907, and although no profit was expected from their activities, it was agreed that all benefits and discoveries would be shared equally among the members. They began with gliding experiments using Bell’s strange tet­rahedral design and then working with the proven Chanute designs of the biplane glider. They experi­mented with lift and control before moving on to any motorized attempt at flight.

The group moved operations from Nova Scotia to Hammondsport, where fabrication and machine working expertise was available at Cur­tiss’ shop. They were learning fast, and they had a lot to learn; yet they were making excellent prog­ress. At the end of that year Curtiss wrote to the Wrights telling them of the work of the AEA and offering a gift to the Wrights of his latest 50-horse­power engine. He also alluded to the publication of the government’s recent request for proposals and specifications for the purchase of a flying machine, adding: “You, of course, are the only persons who could come anywhere near doing what is required.”3

On January 15, 1907, Thomas Selfridge wrote to the Wrights asking if they would share details of their glider construction and the results of their experiments with reference to the center of pressure “both on aerocurves and aeroplanes.” The Wrights responded three days later and referenced the requested information as being available in public addresses by Wilbur Wright and Chanute, both from 1903. They also refer­enced the information available in their patent. Everything that was disclosed by the Wrights to Selfridge was apparently already in the public domain.

By March of 1908 the AEA had its first powered machine. Called the Red Wing, it was a biplane with the Curtiss V8 40-horsepower engine, with a rudder mounted aft and an eleva­tor forward, like the Wrights’ Flyer. Although Selfridge had been in charge of its design (each of the members took responsibility for one air­craft design), on the day of the inaugural flight he had been recalled by the Army to Washington, so it fell to Casey Baldwin to pilot the craft. Mounted on ice runners on the frozen surface of Lake Keuka near Hammondsport, the Red Wing lifted off and actually flew almost 100 feet before settling back on the ice. Its second flight five days later was its last, but it covered 318 feet, 11 inches, before crashing back onto frozen Lake Keuka due to lateral control problems. Contem­porary reports described the flight as the first public heavier than air trip in America.

Casey Baldwin oversaw the next design, the White Wing (see Figure 8-3). It incorporated the salvaged engine from Red Wing and sported motorcycle wheels and tires, the first known aircraft to do so. An innovative steerable nose wheel was fashioned allowing a more controlla­ble take off. After their learning experience with Red Wing, the group brain-stormed the problem

of lateral control. They did not plan to incorpo­rate “wing warping” since they were aware that this was the Wrights’ patented method of lateral stability and that, by law, a royalty would have to be paid for its use. Because of Professor Bell’s reputation and wide experience as an inventor, and because all of the flights of the AEA were open to the public, they took pains not to use any devices that might infringe the Wright pat­ent. Bell came up with the idea of moveable panels located on the extreme ends of the wings which could be tilted up or down to either reduce or increase lift for that wing. He called these devices “ailerons,” or little wings.

Although unknown to the members of the AEA, the idea for ailerons had been first pro­posed some 40 years earlier by an English inven­tor, M. P.W. Boulton, who secured an English patent in 1868. Ailerons had also been experi­mented with in 1904 by the Frenchman, Robert Esnault-Pelterie, and again in 1906 by Santos – Dumont. Bell said that his idea for ailerons came from studying birds.

Beginning on May 18, 1908, White Wing made a series of seven flights before being destroyed in another crash. Baldwin, Selfridge, and Curtiss all flew the machine, with Curtiss setting a distance record of almost 1,000 feet on his first attempt. The AEA was making steady progress. Every flight was a new and important learning experience. Curtiss was next in line to design and supervise construction of a successor to White Wing.

About this time the weekly magazine Scien­tific American, in conjunction with the Aero Club of America, offered a beautiful silver trophy and a monetary prize to any aeronaut who could achieve certain prescribed flying goals in each of three successive years. The goal for the first year was that the airplane must fly in a straight course for a distance of one kilometer (3,281 feet). This was a feat already easily accomplished by the Wright Flyer (although few believed it), but the additional requirements set by the contest were that the flight be made in public and that the aircraft take off and land on wheels. The Wright Flyer did not have wheels. Besides, Wilbur had arrived in Paris on May 29, 1908 to begin a series of public flying displays planned for the European scientific community and the crowned heads of Europe. At the same time, Orville was putting the final touches on his plans for the public trials with the U. S. Army at Ft. Myer, scheduled for September. The Wrights were not interested in mere contests, and although they were especially invited by the Aero Club to make the first attempt, Orville declined.

But Curtiss was interested, and he began modifying the White Wing design in order to pro­duce an entrant for the Scientific American Cup. The new craft, dubbed by Dr. Bell the June Bug, incorporated the same 40-horsepower engine as the previous biplanes as well as the ailerons used in White Wing (see Figures 8-4 and 8-5). Its wings were painted yellow. Curtiss flew the June Bug successfully three times on June 21, 1908 and again on June 25, achieving sustained flight of 3,240 feet. The AEA was the first entrant to

contact the Aero Club and to request a trial for the Scientific American trophy (see Figure 8-6). A demonstration was scheduled for July 4, 1908 at Hammondsport.

The event was well attended by the July 4th crowd, most of whom had never seen an airplane, but thunderstorms prevented any flying until late in the afternoon. The assemblage lolled about for most of the day, sprouting umbrellas against the periodic thunderstorms. When the weather permitted, about 5 p. m., the June Bug was rolled out from under its tented enclosure and was made ready for flight. When the June Bug rose into the air, the astonishment of the crowd was evident, but the result was less than
satisfactory: a flight of only 2,200 feet. The prob­lem was due to an incorrect attachment of the tail section to the fuselage. Once corrected, the June Bug again became airborne at 7 p. m. and flew over one mile in 1 minute and 42 seconds, suc­cessfully winning the trophy for the first time (of three required wins).

Everyone in the aviation community had glowing praise for Curtiss and the AEA for their magnificent achievement, with one exception. On July 20, 1908, Orville Wright sent a letter to Curtiss warning that use of the Wright’s control system was a violation of their patent and was not to be used for a commercial purpose or for exhibitions. Although the members of the AEA did not agree that their use of ailerons on the June Bug infringed the Wright patent, they all realized that the days of the AEA were numbered.

Two months later, on September 17th, Thomas Selfridge, one of the original four, was killed in the crash of the Wright Flyer (see pages 53-55) at Ft. Myer. On September 26, the day after Selfridges’ funeral, Dr. Bell con­vened the remaining members of the Aerial Experiment Association and in an address to the group summed up their extraordinary association together:

m We breathed an atmosphere of avia­tion from morning till night and almost from night to morning. Each felt the

stimulation of the discussion with the others, and each developed ideas of his own upon the subject of aviation, which were discussed by all. I may say for myself that this Association with these young men proved to be one of the happiest times of my life, w

It was agreed that the AEA would continue but for six months more (see Figure 8-7). As the last project of the AEA, McCurdy oversaw the design and construction of the Silver Dart, an improved version of the June Bug, with a larger, liquid-cooled engine and a more efficient propel­ler. This craft was first flown in December, and on February 23, 1909, became the first flight of a controlled airplane in Canada at Baddeck Lake.

In March, after the Silver Dart flew a circular course for over 22 miles, the AEA held its last meeting and closed its activities.

McCurdy and Baldwin would go on to form the Canadian Aerodrome Company with the goal of making airplanes for sale to the Canadian Army. Although they continued to fly the Silver Dart, and to construct several more airplanes of similar design, their efforts ultimately come to naught.

Curtiss, on the other hand, was just getting started. In March 1909, he produced a variant of the June Bug, called the Golden Flyer (also known as the Gold Bug), which he sold to the Aeronautic Society of New York for $5,000. This was the first commercial private sale in the United States. The Aeronautic Society, which began fly­ing the craft at commercial exhibitions, agreed to pay the Wrights a royalty, but Curtiss refused.

Instead, he entered the Scientific American competition and, on July 17, 1909, was awarded the Scientific American trophy for the second time, flying a distance of 25 miles. On August 29, 1909, Curtiss won the speed competition (Gordon Bennett Cup) over a closed course at Rheims, France against stiff competition that included Louis Bleriot, who had made the first interna­tional flight on July 25, 1909 by flying the Eng­lish Channel between Calais and Dover. Bleriot’s airplane, incidentally, also utilized ailerons for lateral control. Flying a stripped down version of the Golden Flyer, Curtiss set a world speed record of 43 mph at Rheims, barely edging out Bleriot.

The Board heard from 99 witnesses, including the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Postmaster General, and even Wilbur Wright, whom the Chairman jokingly chided as “being responsible for it all.”

The board heard the testimony of Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce in the Coolidge administration, which said that the government was obliged to lend its support to commercial aviation, as it had always done in the maritime industry. Hoover pointed out that the government had for a century maintained aids to navigation in the coastal waters of the country, provided education and competency standards for ships’ officers, required federal inspections of ships, and funded improvements in and about the navigable waters, including ports. He noted that the 25 years since the flight of the Wright brothers in 1903 had brought little advance in commercial aviation, and that America was lag­ging the Europeans in engaging the subject of transport by air.

The Morrow Board heard from another strong voice in support of governmental action. By the early 1920s, the National Advisory

Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)2 had become a loosely organized group of scientists and engineers who were developing into leaders in aeronautical research and experimentation. NACA conducted pure research in its Langley Laboratory unconstrained by bureaucratic influences. Independence from political pressures contributed greatly to NACA becoming the premier aeronautical research facility in the world beginning in the 1920s. By the time the Morrow Board was convened, NACA had even then gained a great level of respect. The NACA testimony laid the foundation for initiating the examination and licensing of pilots and the imposition of airworthiness standards for aircraft, as well as for the creation of an Aeronautics Branch within the Department of Commerce to administer these activities.

Based on all of the testimony produced before his board, Morrow prepared a report that was to become the blueprint for the develop­ment of commercial aviation for years to come. Among other things, the report concluded:

1. Aviation is vital to the national defense. The means of aircraft design and production must be supported in the national interest, and a military procurement program should be initiated.

2. Non-military aviation, comprising the larg­est potential for commercial development, serves a national purpose, and deserves the support of the government.

3. The government should enhance the safety and reliability of flying by establishing standards for pilots and aircraft. It should establish and maintain airways for navigation and enlarge its support for airmail contract carriers under con­tract with the Post Office. Adi this would have the collateral effect of bolstering both public and banking confidence in aviation.

The Morrow Board was central to the second major federal statute affecting commercial avia­tion, the Air Commerce Act of 1926.

Я The Air Commerce Act of 1926

The next hurdle was actually getting a bill passed through both Houses of Congress. Some of the original recommendations did not make it into law. Debate was vigorous: construction of airfields, they said, should be left to local governments, like docks and port facilities; some Congressmen did not like the government taking control of the air over their real property (thus violating the long-standing law of real property ownership ad coelum or “to the sky”); some tried to exempt intra-state aviation under the doctrine of “states’ rights.” Finally, the statute was enacted and on October 20, 1926, President Coolidge signed it into law.

Prior to this enactment, there had been no official government statement identifying what role, if any, the federal government would play in the field of aviation. There had been no structure, no plan, no strictures, and no standards. In one fell swoop all of this uncertainty vanished, and in its place was laid a solid foundation for the building of a national commercial aviation industry.

The purpose of the act was to promote air commerce. It specifically charged the federal government with the obligation of creating and maintaining a national system of navigational aids and of adopting rules and regulations to promote safety of flight.

The Department of Commerce, in turn, was charged with the responsibility of promulgating and enforcing safety regulations, including the registration and licensing of aircraft, producing aeronautical charts, providing meteorological advice and reports, investigating accidents, and certification and medical examination of pilots. The Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce was created to administer and carry out the requirements placed on the department. This agency was renamed the Bureau of Air Commerce in 1934 and assumed all safety responsibilities. The Interstate Commerce Commission assumed all rate and fare authority.

The black letter law was on the books, the Commerce Department had its marching orders, the banking community had taken note, the manufacturing sector was in place, and the entrepreneurs were emerging. Still, the hearts and minds of the public were with the railroads. Those in government and in aviation wondered how the public imagination could be captured.

■ Lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh had been hired by Robertson Aircraft, one of the original airmail contractors, following a short career in which he fully qualified as an all-around daredevil. He parachuted from a plane in 1922, even before he had soloed an airplane for the first time. He adopted an itinerate life first as a wing-walker and stunt man and then as a barnstormer pilot. With Robertson, he flew the mail between St. Louis and Chicago, a route known for its range of temperatures and volatile weather.

An offer of $25,000 prize money had been made in 1919 by a New York businessman, Raymond Orteig, to anyone who successfully completed a nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Although the Atlantic had been successfully crossed in 1919 in three separate efforts, including one nonstop flight from St. Johns, Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland, no one had succeeded in claiming the Ortieg prize by 1927. Several attempts had been made during the intervening years, including French World War I ace, Rene Fonck, in 1926. In early 1927, Fonck was rumored to be readying another attempt, and Admiral Richard E. Byrd was also said to be preparing to make the crossing in his Fokker Trimotor. Advances in technology by 1927 made the chances of success increasingly likely, and the race was heating up with great publicity.

Lindbergh was backed by a group of St. Louis businessmen, but his budget was lim­ited to $15,000. No airplane existed for that sum of money that had any chance of making the 3,600-mile flight successfully. He decided to fly solo, a controversial decision in an otherwise foolhardy endeavor, but a decision that lent itself to a smaller airplane, one that could possibly be built for a cost within his budget. The Ryan Airplane Company, a small aircraft manufacturer located in San Diego, California, agreed to build the airplane to his specifications for $6,000, plus the cost of the engine. He decided on the Wright Whirlwind engine, whose endurance had been proven earlier in 1927 when two pilots kept their Bellanca aloft with it for a period of 57 hours.

Lindbergh decamped to San Diego where he supervised the construction. Although the airplane type had never before been built (it was a custom job), it was completed in 77 days, and with the Wright Whirlwind installed, the total price was $10,580. To save weight, the Spirit of St. Louis, named in honor of his backers, had no brakes and no radio. Gasoline tanks occupied the forward portion of the cockpit where a windshield would normally be placed. To see forward he was required to use a small periscope. The airplane’s range was 4,200 miles, just 600 miles over the flight-planned distance necessary to reach Paris.

Lindbergh had accumulated just over 2,000 hours of flying time, but his airmail experi­ence had given him exposure to practically all types of weather conditions. He felt that he was ready. He flew the Spirit of St. Louis from San Diego to New York on what was really a “shake down” flight, stopping in St. Louis to refuel, and in the process he set a coast-to-coast record of slightly less than 22 hours. The press cover­age of the transcontinental flight only served to heighten the public attention that had been building.

The Spirit of St. Louis left Roosevelt Field on Long Island at 7:52 a. m. on May 20, 1927, with 450 gallons of gasoline, half the total weight of the airplane. Thirty-three hours and 30 minutes later, Parisians flooded the field at Le Bourget to welcome Lindbergh, and the entire world was consumed by aviation fervor.3 (M Science, freedom, beauty, adven­ture: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind.

I began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the ele­ment of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted a wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for 10 years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.»

Charles A. Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis

If the flying feat itself were not enough to sufficiently impress the mind, then the pro­ceedings that followed, conducted on the world scene, would certainly do the trick. He went on a triumphant tour of European capitals, and

was given audiences with the kings of Belgium and England. President Coolidge sent a United States warship to fetch the young Lindbergh home, where he was met by the dirigible USS Los Angeles and a ticker tape parade. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and commissioned a colonel in the Army Reserve. He was also introduced to Dwight Morrow.

He went on a three-month tour, sponsored by the Guggenheim Fund, of all 48 states, parading in 82 cities, and flying over 22,000 miles in the process. He was a fine hero, conducting himself at all times in his trademark modest and dignified manner. (See Figure 13-1.) He was invited to Mexico by Dwight Morrow, who was then ambassador there, for a Mexican tour and then for a sojourn through Latin America. Ambassador Morrow’s daughter, Anne Spencer, met Lindy on one of his visits to the ambassador’s residence in Mexico and, mutually taken with each other, in due course they were married.

It would be difficult to overstate the effect that Lindbergh had on the nascent airline industry in the late 1920s. Dormant aviation stocks across the board ignited as money poured in from all quarters. In 1926, total passenger enplanements in the United States had numbered less than 6,000. By 1930, the flourishing airline industry carried over 400,000 adventurous souls. Production of aircraft soared.

Back in New York, what might have been the first of all celebrity endorsements occurred when Lindbergh joined the new airline, Trans­continental Air Transport (TAT), lending his name to a commercial product in return for cash and stock. Juan Trippe, (see Figure 13-2) having been deposed from Colonial Air Transport, also signed him up as a technical adviser to his new airline venture, Pan American Airways. This was the beginning of a long-standing relationship between Lindbergh and Trippe4 that would play a key role in the expansion of air commerce around the world and, with it, American influence.

Pan American Airways was to occupy a singu­lar place in the annals of American aviation and in the relationship of an airline company with the U. S. government. What Pan Am came to be was mostly a product of the efforts of Juan Trippe, a true visionary, an indefatigable worker and thinker, a man of exceptional personal and professional contacts in both the world of busi­ness and government, and a man who stayed at the helm of his company longer than any of his contemporaries.

Trippe was instrumental in the formation and early operation of Colonial Airlines, one of the original airmail contract flyers in 1926 that ultimately became part of American Airways. His vision for that airline was much too aggres­sive for its conservative directors and stockhold­ers, and Trippe was soon out. He had actually formed a small airline in 1924, before the finan­cial benefits of airmail carriage became available, but it had been unable to survive. After Colonial Airlines, he was soon underway with his concept of an international airline, lining up financing from his wealthy friends and his father’s Wall Street contacts.

By 1927, Pan American was in the firm control of Juan Trippe and his friends. That year, wheeling, dealing, merging, and negotiating their way, the young men of Pan American had an airmail contract for the Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba route. The contract stipulated that service must commence at the latest by October 19, 1927, and since other companies were wait­ing in the wings hoping Pan American would default, it became a matter of some importance to meet the deadline.

The Fokker Trimotors that Trippe had ordered to service the route had not shown up by that date, so the inaugural flight of Pan American Airways was hastily arranged on the dock at Key West on the drop-dead date. A transient float­plane pilot, bound for a job in Haiti, made a for­tuitous fuel stop that day and unwittingly became a part of the grand history of Pan American, for a cash fee of $175.00. In fact, this unknown itiner­ate pilot was an essential catalyst to the creation of the Pan American Airlines that came to be.

Trippe’s vision was fueled not only by his expansive imagination and unbridled determi­nation, but also by the circumstances in which America found itself in the late 1920s. The 1920s had been a decade of progress, experi­mentation, expansion, and success. World War I had caused Americans to look outward, mainly toward Europe, but now toward the untapped vast South American continent and the Eatin American connection. The region was ideally suited to air transportation because of its island­hopping availability. South America was also largely undeveloped, ruled by mountains, smoth­ered by jungles, and it had largely skipped the era of railroad expansion. Transportation was about to go from pack mule and water skiff directly to air travel.

Europeans, mainly Germans seeking respite from the turmoil and inflation of their defeated nation, had opened up aerial trading routes to South America in 1919. They were expanding their influence along its eastern coast and up into the Caribbean. The expatriates formed a company called Sociedad Colombo-Aleman de Transposes Aereos (SCADTA) under the laws of Colombia that had become, as one of the world’s first airlines, an example of what aviation could do under extremely challenging conditions. In the process, SCADTA had become the pride of the people of Colombia.

The United States looked with some alarm at this development. The long-standing policy of the United States, as articulated in the “Monroe

Doctrine,”3 after all, essentially decreed the Americas for Americans, not Europeans, and cer­tainly not the Germans. The governmental policy toward commercial aviation that was forming during the 1920s held that, while competition among business interests within the United States was good for the public, competition between American businesses outside its borders could be harmful. To properly compete with foreign airlines that were strongly supported by their governments, American international aviation would have to have some form of American gov­ernment support and should follow some kind of governmental policy.

Pan American was ideally positioned to take advantage of this political and economic situa­tion, and Juan Trippe commanded the confidence of the right people in government and business to enhance Pan American’s opportunities. The first Trippe ploy was to take advantage of a prac­tice common in the domestic aviation market to “extend” route authority by fiat of the Postmaster General. This he did by securing an extension authority from the Key West to Havana route to Miami from Key West. After Lindbergh’s epic transatlantic flight and the ensuing public clamor and appeal that it engendered, Trippe signed Lindy up as a consultant, and Lindbergh became an integral part of the Pan Am strategy to extend its routes across the Caribbean and into Central America and then down into South America. In time, he would also figure prominently in Pan American’s westward Pacific expansion.

The second significant development was the passage by Congress in 1928 of the “Foreign Air­mail Act.” This statute allowed the Postmaster General the discretion to grant routes to bidders that, in his opinion, were the “lowest responsible bidders that can perform the service satisfacto­rily.” The Act provided, in so many words, that only airlines capable of operating on a scale and in a manner that would project the dignity of the United States in Latin America would be granted the right to carry international mail. The only airline that fit this description was Pan American.

The first three airplanes purchased by Pan American were land-based Fokker Trimotors. (See Figure 15-9.) With these, the first passen­ger service between Key West and Havana was begun in January 1928. Given the lack of airports over the region and the fact that most of the fly­ing was over water, Pan American made two sig­nificant decisions about its near-term future:

1. The line would employ flying boats to the

exclusion of other types of aircraft.

2, The line would fly only multiengine planes.

These decisions weighed favorably with the public and with the government.

It was also required that a form of navi­gation be developed that would allow flight over the trackless ocean. There were obviously no railroads to follow, no landmarks to navi­gate by, and no open fields to land in. Celestial navigation, long used in maritime transporta­tion, was available, but it had serious limitations as the sole method of navigation for relatively fast moving airplanes. Voice radio was being experimented with on domestic air routes, but the equipment necessary to be placed on board approximated the size and weight of a small piano. Pan American had decided that radio was a near necessity from a safety standpoint, and it was searching for alternatives. An employee of RCA well versed in radio, Hugo Leuteritz, began experimenting with radiotelegraphy with devices that were installed on some of the air­planes. The equipment on board was very light, and the signals were clear and not beset by the static that made voice communication at these latitudes almost impossible. The procedure developed by Leuteritz utilized two land-based listening stations equipped with loop antennae that could pick up and then directionally locate the dots and dashes emitting from the en route aircraft. When the two stations drew lines from their separate positions to that of the aircraft, and the two lines crossed, the latitude and lon­gitude thus determined were transmitted by the shore station to the radio operator aboard the

The public’s use of airmail for business and social purposes has mounted steadily.

(The decline during the fiscal year 1934, and in the subsequent interval required for repairing the decline, was caused by the cancellation of the airmail contracts.)

As volume has mounted, the unit cost to the government has steadily decreased. (Note figures at extreme bottom of chart.)

aircraft and its fix would be established. This method allowed pinpoint accuracy in making the desired landfall.

When the Sikorsky S-38 twin-engine flying boats arrived (see Figure 15-10), Pan Ameri­can’s chief pilot, Captain Eddie Musick (see Figure 15-11), began to make survey flights beyond Havana to anticipated destinations even before the Post Office advertised for bids. It seemed that Pan American had an uncanny knack for already knowing where the routes were going to be offered, and for sewing up the local polit­ical and logistical support, including landing rights, necessary to make the routes immediately feasible and successful.

The next two routes awarded to Pan Ameri­can were (1) from Havana to the Mexican island of Cozumel, then down Central America to Panama, and (2) from Havana to San Juan, Puerto Rico which suddenly increased Pan American’s annual airmail revenues from $160,000 to $2 million. Passenger service was then initiated on February 4, 1929, with Lindbergh at the controls flying the 100-mile per hour S-38. With the first flying boats,
service was commenced directly between Miami and Panama. (See Figures 15-12 and 15-13.) These two lucrative routes were soon followed by a third, from Miami to Mexico City, where linkups were made to the west coast of the United States. Air­mail revenues soon topped $3 million a year.

Airmail routes in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America were consistently awarded only to Pan American in what was becoming the obvious policy of the United States government of allowing Pan American to be the “Chosen Instrument” of U. S. foreign influence.

This was despite the emergence of another American-formed airline, the New York, Rio, and Buenos Aires Airways (NYRBA), which began a head-on competition with Pan American in the region utilizing flying boats.

While Pan American went with the S-38, NYRBA ordered 14 of the Consolidated Com­modore (see Figure 15-14), an amphibian designed as a patrol boat for the United States Navy, but which was converted to commer­cial use by September 1929. The Commodore mounted two 575-horsepower Flornet engines beneath its high wing. It was put into service on the Miami to Santiago, Chile route down the west coast of South America, a 9,000-mile route requiring seven days en route. It was also used on the east coast route to Buenos Aires.

Big names associated with NYRBA, like James Rand (of Remington Rand), former Assis­tant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics William McCracken, and William J. Donovan (credited with forming the Central Intelligence Agency), were unable by the middle of 1930 to secure even one foreign U. S. airmail contract. The airline was losing money on a then-gargan­tuan scale ($50,000 a month) and, without help

from the government, its backers saw no alterna­tive to a sellout. On August 19, 1930, Pan Ameri­can, with unofficial Post Office approval, bought out the NYRBA line. The next day, the Post Office Department advertised the east coast of South America airmail route. Pan American, of course, was the only bidder and it bid the maxi­mum allowable rate.

By 1930, Pan Am was flying 20,000 route miles to 20 different countries, and it was still within the Western Hemisphere. (See Figure 15-15.) Trippe was obviously the American government’s “fair-haired child,” but his efforts at establishing transatlantic service were continu­ously thwarted by the British. Although the Brit­ish agreed in principle with the proposition of bilateral rights between America and England, the standing position was that they were not physi­cally or financially ready to compete with the United States, and until they were, no American rights would be granted. Because of the long dis­tances, Europe was not considered a feasible des­tination without landing rights in Bermuda, and

since that island was strictly English, no European schedules of any sort were considered possible. Trippe turned his attention to the Pacific.

The range, in miles, of available aircraft was the most severely limiting factor in attempt­ing a traverse of the vast Pacific Ocean. Sikor­sky was the first to complete an aircraft design that attempted to address this problem, the S-40 flying boat. (See Figures 15-16 through 15-18.) This model boasted four engines, had a capacity

of 44 passengers, and a range of 1,000 miles. The first S-40 was delivered to Pan American on October 10, 1931, and was christened by Mrs. Herbert Hoover at the Annapolis Naval Air Station. She broke a bottle of Caribbean seawa­ter across the prow of the S-40, after which Juan Trippe dubbed the airplane a Pan American “Flagship.” Thus was the appellation “Clipper” born.

Shortly thereafter, the S-42 (see Figures 15-19 and 15-20), with a range of 2,520 miles, came off the line. This was still a bit short for the 2,410 mile San Francisco-to-Honolulu mn, if any reserve of fuel for weather or other contingencies were to be made. Trippe turned to Glenn Martin for help, while at the same time flying the S-42 configured with extra fuel tanks to assure another 500 miles.

With Findbergh’s help, it was Trippe’s plan that the Pacific would be conquered by way of Alaska, Japan, China, and points south, the kind of Great Circle route Findbergh had used in 1927 to Paris. No airmail contract had been awarded to Pan Am, but Trippe was proceeding any­way. He bagged a majority interest in an airline with operating rights in China called the China National Aviation Corporation, but then, in 1934, Japan was becoming militarily aggressive, and the U. S. State Department advised against the

proposed route. To go straight across the Pacific would require a route including Honolulu, Mid­way, Wake Island, and Guam before reaching Manila, Philippines. Aside from the fact that the Sikorsky aircraft was limited in range, there were absolutely no facilities on Midway, Wake, or Guam.

In typical fashion, Trippe had a freighter loaded with the necessary equipment, supplies, workmen, and supervisors and dispatched it to each of the proposed landing sites to con­struct the necessary passenger and aircraft sup­port facilities, including terminals and hotels. With this service archipelago in place, and with

landing rights in Hong Kong, Pan American was poised to be the first transpacific airline with ser­vice from the American to the Chinese coasts.

In October 1935, the first M-130 Martin fly­ing boat was delivered (the first of three). (See Figures 15-22 through 15-24.) This craft was larger than any other flying at the time. It had a range of 4,000 miles configured for mail and 3,200 miles with 12 passengers, a cruising speed of 163 miles per hour and redundant hydraulic
and electrical systems. With the airmail con­tract secured, service was inaugurated for mail and cargo delivery on November 22, 1935, in a ceremony at the dock in San Francisco attended by Postmaster General Farley. In October 1936, with the support facilities now in place, pas­senger service across the Pacific Ocean began to Manila. A New Zealand route followed after Australia was blocked by the British, and then a second, southern transpacific route was initiated

via Kingman Reef and Pago Pago. On April 21, 1937, the transpacific route was extended to Hong Kong, with connecting flights to destina­tions in China serviced by the Pan Am subsid­iary, China National Aviation Corporation. Then, within a six-month period, December 1937 to the summer of 1938, Pan American suffered two highly publicized clipper accidents that brought unaccustomed criticism, both from the press and from government quarters. Chief Pilot Eddie Musick, who had surveyed the original Latin American routes 10 years before, was at the con­trols of an S-40 off of Somoa when it exploded in

midair. In July 1938, one of the three Martin 130 Clippers disappeared between the Philippines and Guam. The intense expansion of routes over the Pacific was taking a heavy toll and, while Pan Am banked over $ 1 million in profits from Latin American operations in 1938, it was losing large sums of money in the Pacific. Trippe turned his energies back to the Atlantic.

On February 22, 1937, the British Air Min­istry issued Pan Am a permit to operate a regular air service between the United Kingdom and the United States via intermediate points in Canada, Bermuda, Ireland, and Portugal. The agreement by Pan Am to pool passengers and cargo with the British airline, Imperial Airways, had a lot to do with this breakthrough. Technological advances, however, followed shortly on the heels of diplo­macy. On order from Pan American since 1936, Boeing in 1938 produced its B-314 clipper (see Figure 15-25), the largest aircraft to be used in scheduled service then or thereafter until the arrival of the jumbo jets of the late 1960s. This airplane was configured in two decks, had a speed of 193 miles per hour and a range of 3,500 miles, enough range to allow Pan American to fly right over Bermuda en route to Europe. It car­ried 74 passengers seated or 40 passengers in the sleeping berth configuration. The Clipper went into the Pacific route service on February 22, 1939. (See Figures 15-26 and 15-27.)

In the Atlantic, Pan American launched its passenger service between New York and Mar­seille, France, on June 28, 1939 with the Dixie Clipper, a Boeing 314A, followed on July 8, 1939, by Yankee Clipper service from New York to Southampton.

Summary of Airlines’ Condition

The effects of the Great Depression were less­ening by 1938. The economy was recovering, jobs were being restored, and manufacturing was picking up, including in the aircraft industry.

Although the airlines’ income from airmail car­riage was down from what it had been before 1934, passenger revenues were up and exceeded airmail revenue for the first time. Airlines began to expand their passenger facilities and corporate infrastructure, and their traffic and sales depart­ments. The airline industry was beginning to

have an impact on the public and on the econ­omy. As the government lost more control over the airlines because of the lessening effects of airmail revenue, and as the airlines began to develop passenger traffic and revenue, it was time for the government to put into effect some kind of comprehensive control of the industry.

The situation was not unlike that of the railroad industry with the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, or the trucking and bus industry in the Motor Carrier Act of 1935, except for one thing: The airlines wanted regulation.

Endnotes

1. History. NASA. gov/SP—4406/chapl. html—from which much of this section was taken.

2. Pacific Air Transport v. U. S.; Boeing Air Transport v. U. S.; United Airline Transport Corporation v. U. S., 98 Ct. Cl. 649 (1942).

3. The Monroe Doctrine was first expressed by President James Monroe in the State of the Union address to Con­gress on December 2, 1823. According to this policy, the American continents (North and South America, and includ­ing Central America) were to be henceforth free of any further colonization attempts by any European power. This statement of American national interest implied the use of American military and economic power in its enforcement. International adventures by Spain and Portugal triggered this policy.

In 1962, Lockheed won an Air Force contract to build the largest cargo plane ever conceived. The aircraft specified by the government included power plants of four 21,000-pound thrust turbo­fans, a range of 4,000 miles, and a useful load of 71,000 pounds plus fuel. When complete, the aircraft would be known as the C-141 Starlifter, and it would have shortcomings. Chief among these was the fact that the C-141 did not have the design volume required to house the cargo load specified. Already recognized by the Air Force was the need for a larger airplane. The Air Force had put out for competition the design of what was to be known as the C-5A, a truly mam­moth creation. Lockheed won this competition too, even though Boeing’s entry was a serious contender in the competition and, on reflection, perhaps the best of the three entries.

Second-place Boeing decided to convert its design and engineering effort to commercial passenger use. Juan Trippe, ever on the cut­ting edge, had indicated an interest in such an aircraft. Boeing showed that its cargo plane could be modified to accommodate 450 passen­gers, at 19 feet, 5 inches in width, and 231 feet in length. The JT9D turbofan, a high-bypass – ratio jet engine with 41,000 pounds of thrust, was chosen to power the aircraft. This airplane would also fly faster than previous models, at 625 miles per hour, and would be known as the 747. (See Figure 21-5.) Juan Trippe had long ago concluded that the key to making

money in the airline business was to fill the airplanes with paying customers, like he did with the DC-4 in the late 1940s in the San Juan to New York migration. Now, this was a dream come true. He signed a letter of intent to pur­chase 25 of the “wide bodies,” as they were to be known.

Boeing, just as it had during the design phase of the first American jet transport, the 707, took its safety responsibilities seriously. The “carnage factor” of a crash of such a large aircraft was daunting, and only increased Boe­ing’s commitment to safety in the design stage. A “safety committee” was formed to review every aspect of the new aircraft. Concerns of the committee ran the gamut of engineering and construction, from hydraulics, to wing loads, and even to coffee pots. The airplane was so huge that Boeing did not even have a facility large enough to build it, so a new plant had to be con­structed at Everett, Washington. It was the larg­est factory in the world.

The 747 first flew on February 9, 1969. Once again, Pan American was the first to place yet another new prototype airliner in service, this time the 747 Clipper Young America out of JFK for Europe. The 747 had initial problems, mostly because of its size. For instance, baggage

facilities were overloaded at destination, caus­ing delays; cabin attendants were overwhelmed by the number of drinks, meals, and related requirements caused by the passenger count; the lavatories seemed inadequate for the needs of passengers; and so on. Each of the concerns was addressed, resolved, and the 747 gradu­ally became a favorite of the flying public. The upper deck of the 747, complete with its cocktail lounge atmosphere for first-class passengers, which was sometimes converted to a restaurant, and its piano manned by a professional pianist, was reminiscent of the lower deck of the Strato – cruiser of the 1940s.

In 1967, Eockheed completed its design for its wide-bodied entrant into the field, known as the L-1011 Tristar. (See Figures 21-6 and 21-7.) Lockheed utilized the fuselage tail-mounted

engine of the original Trident, together with two wing-mounted engines, for its combined power plant, and it could accommodate 300 passengers.

Circumstances, primarily financial, had required Douglas to merge with McDonnell Air­craft of St. Louis in 1967. The new company was known as McDonnell-Douglas. Its submission to the wide-body contest was the DC-10, which bore a marked similarity to the L-1011. Both aircraft had three turbofans, one mounted under each wing and one tail mounted. The L-1011’s rear engine’s intake was built into the vertical stabilizer above the top of the fuselage, with the engine mounted at the rear of the cabin. In the DC-10, the third engine was mounted through the vertical stabilizer, with the intake and exhaust in a direct line fore to aft. (See Figure 21-8.)

In 1970, European aircraft builders, funded by their national governments and comprising a loose consortium of French and British interests that were later joined by the Germans, estab­lished their own aircraft production company, Airbus Industrie. The purpose, as they said, was “to reduce dependence on foreign equipment, facilitate survival of a struggling European air­craft industry and address a market opportunity not being met by the Americans.” This consor­tium designed the Airbus 300, a 300-passenger entry actually built by Sud Aviation in Tou­louse, France. The A300 had only two turbofan engines, either Rolls-Royce or General Electric, but for various reasons the A300 was slow to materialize. The A300 did not fly until 1972, over three years after the 747, and over one year after the DC-10.

Problems related to structural integrity were encountered by the DC-10 shortly after its inauguration. First, in June 1972, an American Airlines DC-10 out of Detroit suffered a decom­pression incident when a baggage door, located on the lower deck, blew off and collapsed the supporting deck of the passenger section above. Hydraulic lines had been designed and built to run the length of the aircraft through the floor or deck between the upper and lower compart­ments, and when the floor collapsed, some of these lines were severed, causing serious control problems for the flight crew. Only the ingenuity and skill of the crew allowed the stricken craft to be brought in for a safe landing.

The baggage doors were not the plug-type doors designed into many jet aircraft, but were dependent on latch mechanisms that, upon inves­tigation, were found to be defective. An aircraft directive mandating corrective action was issued and the modifications were performed with the exception of two airplanes.

One of these was found and fixed; the other was not. On March 3, 1974, the airliner that had been overlooked, a Turkish Airline DC-10, which was flying from Paris to London, suffered a similar baggage door failure with a similar floor collapse. This time the crew was unable to fly the aircraft, which crashed, taking all 346 lives aboard.

In the DC-10, no further baggage door inci­dents occurred, nor were any other serious fail­ures experienced for six years. Then on May 25, 1979, as an American Airlines DC-10 climbed out from Chicago О’Hare after takeoff, the left engine separated from the wing pylon, causing the aircraft to roll inverted and nose down, a condi­tion that the crew was unable to correct at such a low altitude. All 271 people on board were killed, along with two more on the ground. The NTSB determined the probable cause of the accident was “the asymmetrical stall and the ensuing roll of the aircraft because of the uncommanded retraction of the left wing leading edge slats.” The separation resulted “from improper maintenance procedures which led to the failure of the pylon structure.”

The wide-bodied experience of the Ameri­can producers could be said to have been only marginally successful. Ultimately, McDonnell – Douglas sold 300 DC-10s while Lockheed sold only 244 L-lOlls. By 1982 when production of the L-1011 was halted, Lockheed is said to have lost some $2.5 billion on the project.

Airbus, on the other hand, had managed to design a product that would crack the American airline market from Europe for the first time. The A300 had only two engines. This was of some concern initially for transoceanic flight, but it translated directly into reduced operating costs.

Secondly, the A300 had incorporated compos­ite, lightweight materials in its structure, adding to its cost effectiveness. As Air France began in 1974 to operate the A300 around the world, the airplane soon began to sell in the European and Asian airline market. Korean Air Lines, Lufthansa, Indian Air Lines, and South African Airways bought the A300. Frank Borman of Eastern arranged a six-month trial of the A300 for its New York to Miami route, without any commitment to buy the airplane. This was an unprecedented deal, amounting to a manufac­turer loss-leader arrangement whereby Airbus, in effect, loaned its airplane to Eastern on a trial basis. It turned out to be a brilliant stroke by Airbus that resulted in Eastern placing an order for 23 of the aircraft at the price of $25 million a copy, in April 1978.

With the Airbus 300, a trend began in airliner construction of wide-bodied, twin – engined, and lighter weight airplanes that still endures. Boeing contributed the 767 in 1983, using weight-saving composite materials and an advanced wing structure. Since the Boeing and Douglas face-off in the 1930s, beginning with the introduction of the 247 and the DC-1, the history of commercial airliner production competition had been an altogether American affair. Now, with the emergence of Airbus Industrie, com­bined with the shrinking number of American aircraft manufacturers, the contest was becoming not only international, but also specifically Euro­pean versus American.

In 1946, Congress authorized the expenditure of federal funds for use by the political subdi­visions of state, county, and city governments in building or improving the airport infrastruc­ture. Under the provisions of the Federal Airport

Act of 1946, the government would contribute 50 percent of the cost of these improvements, and the local government would fund the rest. Small communities found it difficult to come up with even 50 percent of such large expenditures. The program worked better in large cities that could float bond issues to finance their portion of the cost. A series of amendments to the Act extended the duration and funding of the pro­gram and added provisions designed to guarantee proper standards of construction and operation, open and nondiscriminatory access by the public, and appropriate zoning of lands adjacent to the airport.

New York utilized the program to construct a third major airport, named Idlewild (now JFK), and then expanded the original construction with $60 million of terminal buildings and parking areas. Los Angeles raised a bond issue in the amount of $60 million for its international air­port. St. Louis expanded its airport and built a new terminal. The busiest airport in the coun­try was Midway, in Chicago, with an arrival or departure every 80 seconds. The activity at Mid­way led to the building of O’Hare, which opened in 1955. Dulles airport, conceived to serve Wash­ington, D. C., finally found a home in Chantilly, Virginia, in 1958. Still, it was generally realized and noted at the time that United States airports were not ready for jets, and that they were not keeping up with the growth of commercial air travel. The number of passengers enplaning on domestic flights would almost double between 1954 and 1959, from 32 million to 55 million. And it was reckoned that less than 10 percent of the American population had ever set foot on a commercial airplane.

Airports faced new problems as a direct result of the larger piston airplanes, and these problems were compounded by the arrival of jets. Fuel storage facilities were inadequate, both in size and in type, since jets burned a form of kerosene, not the gasoline of piston engines. Taxiways had to be redesigned, relocated, and widened, due both to the size of the aircraft and to allow for the new, low positioning of jet engines on the pylons hanging below the wing. FOD, the new acronym for foreign object damage, was a major concern to the health and integrity of jet engines because they could not tolerate ingesting small rocks, gravel, and debris of any kind lying about the taxi way. Runways were too short for jet aircraft, particularly those needing a full load of fuel for transatlantic or transcontinental routes. These requirements were exceedingly costly to the airport owners, usually a governmental entity, whether city, county, or regional political subdivision.

Not only was it costly and time-consuming to enlarge and upgrade existing airports, new con­struction was becoming a contentious issue in the communities in which they were located. Noise associated with jet operations was becoming a serious environmental issue, an issue that had con­stitutional and legal ramifications that extended far beyond the boundaries of the airports. And if improvement of existing airport facilities was a problem, then the building of new airports was next to impossible to pull off. In 1952 when authorities began looking for a site near Washington, D. C., to relieve the already overcrowded National Airport, an exercised public in Fairfax County, Virginia, rose in protest. It would require six years of effort spent in negotiation, in cajoling, in conducting studies, and in spending lots of money before the eventual site for Dulles International Airport was selected and approved. It was worse in the met­ropolitan New York area. Attempts to locate an agreeable site anywhere in northern New Jersey were defeated; 22 other proposed sites in New York and New Jersey went down in flames. A group composed of the New York Port Author­ity, the FAA, and some airlines finally settled on a site 48 miles from the city, but opposition can­celled that one too. Plans to expand and upgrade the ancient White Plains Airport were defeated by local opposition. To this day, New York has the same three airports that it had in 1950.

The resistance was not limited to the North­east. Attempts in Dade County, Florida, to build a new airport to serve Miami failed. Miami Inter­national Airport, like most metropolitan airports, has been situated in the same place since bi­wing, open cockpit airplanes first began using it. One exception is the DallasFort Worth Airport, in Texas, which only came about because of the cooperation of the citizens and local governments of the two cities that it serves. Located midway between Dallas and Fort Worth, DFW was com­pleted in 1974. It became a symbol of pride and progress for the area, and it was appreciated by its business and leisure travel communities. One motivating factor for success was the appall­ingly inadequate Love Field in Dallas, which it replaced, as well as the fact that Fort Worth had no commercial airport at all. After completion of DFW, no new airport would be built in the United States for another 20 years.3

The launch of the Airbus 380, the world’s largest airplane, in December 2000 created another challenge for U. S. airports, as well as airports all over the world. The size of the A380 requires that modifications be made at airports that will serve the new gigantic aircraft. Although the A380 can land on runways that will accept the Boeing 747, modifications to taxiways, terminal gates, and aprons will have to be made. Airports will also have to fund the purchase of new servicing vehicles for the A3 80.

By 2011, six airports in the United States had been equipped to handle the A380, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, JFK, Dulles, and Houston. The Houston Airport Authority reported that it spent $8 million to widen run­ways (with an additional $30 million to $40 million planned to upgrade runways to FAA requirements), $7.5 million for gate bridges to allow loading and unloading, and $15 million to $20 million for interior gate hold areas and improvements.

As of 2012, although not one United States airline had ordered the A3 80, it was being flown by seven world airlines, including Air France, Korean, China Southern, Lufthansa, Singapore, Qantas, and Emirates.

For over 100 years, the evolution of commercial aviation has been a worldwide phenomenon. It has been the result of a combination of individual and corporate effort, and it has proceeded because of, and sometimes in spite of, the involvement of governments. In the United States, commercial aviation developed under prin­ciples of private enterprise in tension with government in its role of protecting the public interest. In contrast, throughout most of the rest of the world, governments had assumed the lead in innovation, development, and promotion of civil aviation, consistent with their more socialized economic systems and philosophies.

The cornerstone of the American experiment is government-protected indi­vidual freedom, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This freedom extends to business: the freedom to risk capital and ingenuity in return for financial gain. Failures resulting from these risks are borne individually or corporately, while the fruits of success often accrue to the benefit of the many.

The government of the United States traditionally has not been an intrusive government; rather, it was created in reaction to intrusive, oppressive foreign gov­ernment. The powers of the federal government are derived from the people and are granted specifically in the Constitution of the United States. The government has no other source of power. Involvement of the federal government in the affairs of its citizens is authorized only as a result of duly enacted legislation (statutory law) by the Congress, and then only as to those matters over which it is given jurisdiction by the provisions of the Constitution.

When the American government was created, land transportation was primar­ily a private affair. The federal government took cognizance of its admiralty (mar­itime and shipping) responsibilities, but otherwise gave little heed to matters of travel. The obligation of government to attend to the “public welfare” extended to matters of interstate commerce, banking, defense, and the delivery of mail through the Post Office Department. The government experimented with trail improve­ment on its western margins (Ohio Territory, for instance) and road building (Post roads) incident to the delivery of the mails, but did little else. As the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution proceeded, so did the manufacturing and commercial enterprises that utilized them. Corporate forms of existence came into general use. Westward migration followed the steam locomotive and the tele­graph across the country. The government was increasingly drawn into subsidy
and regulation. These developments were followed by the reciprocating gasoline engine, the automobile, and the telephone. The transmission of electricity, wire­less communication, commercial radio, and the airplane came after. The role of government continued to expand as the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution increasingly impacted the nation’s commerce and its people.

The concepts of the federal maritime law were applied to the railroads when they appeared, and the law was modified as necessary to account for differences between these two modes of transport. Government experience with the railroads was applied to the new air transport industry when, in turn, it appeared. The result has been the development of a similar government methodology for the treat­ment of all forms of commercial transportation. Government in the United States remained mostly in the background even into the early part of the 20th century, but it remained ready to apply a steadying hand to prevent excesses of private or corporate self-interest.

The other primary interest of government in modern transportation involved issues of safety, which was legally appropriate under the Constitution in the interest of the public welfare. Government involvement in transportation safety issues first appeared in connection with railroad employees, who were suffering egregious personal injury due to the nature of railroading in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Government’s first involvement with aviation safety issues, in 1925, related to certification of pilots and aircraft, and airworthiness concerns. Safety would become the overriding governmental interest in commercial aviation as the 20th century progressed and as economic regulation by the government was phased out, beginning in 1978.

The early involvement of the government of the United States in transporta­tion issues was mainly reactive, but also partly proactive. The railroad industry – government relationship was fairly well-established by the time the first practical airplane was developed. The railroads were privately owned, but the government actively regulated them. The United States experimented with government owner­ship of the railroads during World War I, but ended up returning them to corporate ownership after the war.

When the airplane appeared, there was no practical reason, nor any legal jus­tification, for any government involvement. The audacious and romantic notion of flight was not put to practical use for over a decade after the Wrights’ first flight, then in war in Europe in 1914. By war’s end in 1918, in the United States the airplane was quickly returned to curiosity status, being used in barnstorming exhibitions, banner towing, and the occasional sightseeing flight. In the first part of the 20th century, America ran on wheels, steel ones and ever increasingly on rubber-tired wheels, and it did not have any immediate need for the airplane.[1]

In Europe, a limited commercial success had already been seen in Germany with the rise and deployment of dirigibles by 1909. European governments soon

appreciated the potential commercial use of the airplane, particularly given the ruinous state of Europe’s railroads after the devastation of World War I. The English Channel lay between London and Paris, separating two of the premier commercial and cultural metropolitan centers of the world, and it provided an obvious reason for commercial aviation to succeed. European governments owned the railroads. It was natural that the first commercial airlines created after World War I would also be owned by European governments.

But the United States was staunchly capitalistic. If aviation for any purpose was to succeed in this country, it was going to be up to a new breed of adven­turer and entrepreneur to make it happen. Who they were and how they made it happen is the larger part of the account of the first century of flight. The story of airmail, the politics of the Great Depression, the creation of private airlines, the impact of World War II, the dawning of the jet age, the deregulation of the air­lines, the advent of world competition, the space age, and the commercialization of space are all part of that adventure. The achievements of the first century of flight required the best from many worlds. The realms of business and finance, of engineering and science, and of government struggled together to overcome the uncertainties at the leading edge of a new technology. These struggles continue even today as the air transport industry, the flying public, and the government attempt to define the role that air transportation should play in the 21st century.

As a new millennium gets underway, government is being called upon to play perhaps its most decisive role ever in air transportation: the protection of the traveling public from international terrorism, and the pursuit of its ultimate defeat. [2] 1

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Harry W. Lawrence is a member of the faculty of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Worldwide, and holds the rank of Adjunct Assistant Professor.

He received his Juris Doctor degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1965, and was admitted to practice in Florida, Tennessee, and the District of Columbia. He was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States and Courts of the Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits of the United States. He served as counsel for Seaboard Coast Line Railroad and Clinchfield Railroad Company (now CSX). He is Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by the Florida Bar. His practice of law had an emphasis on insurance, maritime, aviation, and railroad transportation issues.

He holds a Commercial Pilot Certificate with instrument, multiengine, glider, seaplane, and jet type ratings. He has been corporate owner and operator of fixed – base operations for general aviation, including turbojet commercial aircraft.

Foundation

Beginnings

The Industrial Revolution

The Railroads

The Industrial Age and the Rise of Unionism

Along with his refusal to pay royalties, the pub­licity and success that Curtiss was obviously attaining was too much for the Wrights to bear, so they filed their first patent infringement law­suit against Curtiss and the Herring-Curtiss Com­pany in August 1909. Curtiss had formed the Herring-Curtiss Company with Augustus M. Herring in March 1909, primarily on the strength of Herring’s representations of having a patent for the airplane that preceded that of the Wrights, and further of having been extensively associated with Octave Chanute and Samuel J. Langley in their aeronautical experiments. It soon turned out that Herring possessed no patent, but Curtiss still refused to pay royalties to the Wrights. So did many other aviators. Few people could believe that the two brothers owned, to the exclusion of everyone else in the world, the right to fly.

The Curtiss litigation was only one of many lawsuits the Wrights had filed against purported patent infringers. The Wrights sued the Aero­nautic Society of New York. They sued this one and then that one, in the United States and in the courts of Europe, including England, France, and Germany. Judgment was ultimately entered in over 30 lawsuits brought by the Wrights. The Wrights’ attention had turned completely away from the excitement of flying that now gripped the European and American aviation commu­nity. Their concentration was on litigation. They set up a corporation to own and manage their patent and to prevent any competition through litigation. They were consumed with the com­mercial exploitation of their airplane, but they were being left behind as the aeronautical world flew on.

Most of those who had been active in the small fraternity of aeronauts were appalled by the Wrights’ actions. Octave Chanute, who had so openly shared the results of his experi­mentation in gliding and airfoils (which had been adopted by the Wrights in large measure), was highly critical of the Wrights and publicly rebuked their patent litigation. Perhaps the best illustration of the public feeling at the time was expressed in the Evansville (Illinois) Courier of December 2, 1909:

«For the purpose of controlling abso­lutely in this country and Canada all aviation by means of heavier-than – air machines, the Wright Company, backed by financiers controlling probably nearly a billion dollars, was formed several days ago. The men behind the latest, The Flying Machine Trust, are nearly all prominent in financial and trust affairs. The capital of the company is modestly placed at $1,000,000, and it is announced that there is no stock for sale. The com­pany, which has been formed to take over all of the Wrights’ patents and to prosecute infringements, claims as an asset even the principle of the plane and the control of the equilibrium of the machine.4»»

The Wrights’ suit against Curtiss resulted in the first court decision on the patent issue in January 1910. The federal court in the Western District of New York found that Curtiss had, indeed, violated the Wright patent. Although the Wright machines used wing “warping,” and Cur­tiss used “ailerons” to accomplish lateral control, the court ruled that the Wrights’ discovery of a workable means for achieving lateral equilibrium or balance was what was protected under the pat­ent, not the method for achieving it. Thus, the dissimilarities between wing warping control and aileron control to produce lift differential of the wings “had no bearing upon the means adopted to preserve equilibrium.”5 Curtiss immediately appealed the decision, posted a bond to super­sede the judgment, and then went back to work.

He moved forward energetically in many areas, innovating, testing, and improving his machines. He agreed to participate in an air meet in Los Angeles at the beginning of 1910, the first such major event in the United States. Although the Wrights did not compete in the event, they were there to try to shut it down. Louis Paulhan, the French aeronaut and early aviation record holder, was greeted upon his arrival by Wright lawyers serving a patent infringement suit and complaint for an
injunction to prevent anyone from flying. The event ran, nevertheless, from January 10 to Jan­uary 20 and was attended by 254,000 spectators. The Los Angeles Times said it was one of the greatest public events in the history of the west. Even the federal courts must have thought so, as no injunctions were issued.

Curtiss won $6,600 in prize money in the categories of fastest speed, endurance, and quick starting and set a new air speed record of 55 mph. From Los Angeles he traveled east and accepted the challenge issued by New York World publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, to compete for the first successful flight between New York City and Albany, New York. The challenge carried with its successful conclusion a $10,000 prize for completion of the 152-mile distance, which allowed two landings en route and completion within a period of 24 hours. Curtiss chose to fly down the Hudson River from Albany, success­fully completing the competition requirements on May 29, 1910. It was the first official cross­country airplane flight in the United States.

In July 1910, six months after the trial court ruling in the Curtiss case, the Court of Appeals of New York reversed the trial court and sent the case back for further evidentiary hearings at the
trial level, effectively putting the parties to the litigation back where they had started.

In the middle of the 1920s, aviation in America was emerging from its long period of confusion and stagnation. But aviation in Europe had captured the imagination of the people and of industry almost immediately after the Wright brothers’ tour of Europe in 1908-9, and it still led the way. The United States government had been significantly involved in promoting aviation at least since 1918 with subsidy and direct investment in infrastructure, and in 1926 it would begin to legally promote safety
and standards in aviation in order to boost the public confidence. But the job was big. The list of individual citizens with ardent interests in aviation in the 1920s was long, and the record of their contributions was even-then impressive. Corporate America, as well, had shared in the promotion and advancement of aviation. But the going was still slow.

One of the more beneficial byproducts of the American system of private enterprise is the philanthropic activity of its successful practitioners. The giving of one’s time, interest, and assets to causes of one’s choosing is a time-honored tradition in America. The Guggenheim family of New York made its money in the mining industry. In 1924, Daniel Guggenheim and his wife, Florence, established a foundation to promote a variety of charitable causes. One of their sons, Harry Guggenheim, was a pilot during World War I and became com­mitted to the advancement of aviation. Father and son established, in 1926, a separate fund called the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, and by 1930 the family had given almost $3 million to aviation-related projects.

The Guggenheims believed, like the government, that the public would embrace air travel if confidence could be established in its safety. A significant part of the safety of air travel depended on reliably designed and constructed aircraft, yet there was no such thing as what we now know as an aeronautical engineer in 1925. The Guggenheims began to fund the establishment of schools at universities across the country, and by 1929 aeronautical engineering programs or research centers had been set up at the California Institute of Technology, Stanford, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Syracuse, Northwestern, the University of Michigan, and others.

In 1927, the Guggenheims offered a prize of $100,000 for the construction of safe aircraft in a contest called the “Safe Aircraft Competition.” The prize went to the Curtiss Tanager, which had incorporated into its design the first short takeoff and landing (STOL) characteristics, including reduced stall speeds, ever demonstrated.

The Fund subsidized an operation in California by Western Air Express (WAE) in 1928 known as the “Model Airway,” between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Airmail was not carried on this route since no award had been made by the Post Office to WAE. Instead, the airline carried only passengers along the corridor in an effort to show that commercial passenger service was feasible without airmail subsidies, as well as safe and reliable. The Fund provided a Fokker F-10 Super Trimotor to WAE for this scheduled service and had implemented a weather-reporting regimen along the route that utilized two-way radio. This was the first PIREPS (pilot weather reporting system) in history. The passenger operations ended in 1929, and although the experiment was not profitable, it did demonstrate that passenger – only (non-airmail) service could be feasible and popular with the public, at least between certain population centers. At a time when one of the most frequent causes of airplane crashes was allocated to adverse weather conditions, not one weather-related incident was recorded. Upon the termination of the experiment in June 1929, the weather bureau assumed the reporting of aviation weather locally, and the practice ultimately spread all across the country.

When Charles Lindbergh, in 1928, suggested that it would be helpful to navigation if the names of cities and towns could be painted on the roofs of large buildings, the Guggenheims funded the cost. The Postmasters of some 8,000 communi­ties arranged for the painting on rooftops of their towns’ names in large letters, with arrows point­ing to the north and, if available, to the nearest landing field.

The Guggenheims made a very significant contribution to advances in instrument flying by funding research involving gyroscopic instru­mentation invented by Elmer Sperry (directional gyrocompass and artificial horizon) and Paul Kolls – man (precision altimeter). Guggenheim-funded engineers worked with the Aeronautics Branch of the Commerce Department and the Bureau of Standards to advance radio navigation, and with Jimmy Doolittle to test and implement instrument procedures in 1929 that made safe instrument flight routine within a decade.

ince 1926, what little regulation the government had imposed on the aviation community had been administered by the Depart­ment of Commerce, specifically the Aeronautics Branch first and then the Bureau of Air Com­merce beginning in 1934. Even with these rules, regulation was decentralized. Jurisdictional dis­putes existed among the Post Office Department, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Bureau of Air Commerce.

In the meantime, flying had progressed from mail planes constructed of wood and wire with open cockpits to all-metal stress-skinned mono­planes flying in instrument conditions at speeds over three times that of early aircraft. In the middle 1930s, flying was still something of an adventure, for navigation facilities were primi­tive, instruments rudimentary, and weather prog­nostication an immature art form.

The TWA crash of the Fokker Trimo­tor in 1931 that killed Knute Rockne was the most notorious domestic airline crash until the death of Senator Bronson Cutting on May 6, 1935, aboard another TWA airplane, a DC-2, on a transcontinental flight from Los Ange­les to Newark. Cutting boarded the aircraft at Albuquerque, N. M., where it was reported that the plane’s radio transmitter was faulty. The
weather at Kansas City, which had been pre­dicted to be good, had deteriorated to a ceiling of 600 feet, 100 feet below minimums, by the time of the flight’s arrival in the area. Unable to communicate or to make the appropriate instru­ment approach, and with fuel low, the DC-2 crashed while attempting to fly visually at tree – top level.

Cutting was much beloved in the Senate. The congressional investigation of the crash centered on the Department of Commerce and its administration of aviation safety. It was determined that the Department had been lax in enforcing what few rules were in place. Then a controversy arose between the Department and TWA as to whether the 45-minute fuel reserve rule had even been properly published, or whether TWA was otherwise notified of the rule. There were questions of conflict of interest over the Department of Commerce investigating itself concerning the adequacy of existing rules and their enforcement. The Department was shown to have a propensity for laying blame on the pilot in command, a tendency, some may argue, that continues to this day. The press stirred the pot well, and the public reaction ranged from a loss of confidence in the system to outrage. The sense of the Congress was that the Department
of Commerce had failed to keep pace with the ongoing progress of commercial aviation.

Then, on October 7, 1935, a United Air­lines crash near Denver killed 12 passengers and crew. On April 7, 1936, another TWA DC-2 crashed in Pennsylvania with 12 more fatalities. On August 6, 1936, a Chicago & Southern Lock­heed went down in St. Louis with fatalities of all 8 aboard, and on February 10, 1937, a DC-3 flown by United Airlines crashed in San Fran­cisco and all 11 on board were lost. The winter of 1937, in fact, recorded 5 airline crashes with fatalities.

The airlines took it upon themselves to develop operating rules and regulations for the governance of their pilots, still a rather undis­ciplined lot, who looked upon flying as another form of freedom, not restriction. The manage­ment of the airlines understood that, in order to win the confidence of the public and take their place as a legitimate form of public transporta­tion that could compete with the railroads, order must be brought to the rather free-form society of aviation, up to that time primarily known for its airmail deliveries and stunt pilots.

In 1935, the airlines knew that someone had to control the growing number of airplanes ply­ing the skies, particularly where they converged for landing, like in Newark, New Jersey. Newark Airport had a departure or an arrival every 10 minutes. It was American Airlines that took the lead in designating a “boss,” someone in charge who could direct planes to maintain separation from each other. This was primarily accom­plished by assigning to each aircraft an altitude as they approached for landing. An agreement among six airlines created a company known as Air Traffic Control, Inc., and it was manned by employees of those companies.

The first facility was set up at Newark (see Figure 16-1) on December 1, 1935, followed by one in Chicago in April 1936, and another in Cleveland in June 1936. At first, the control­lers sought to track flights within 50 miles of the controlled airport, using blackboards, a large

table map, a telephone, and a Teletype. Flight plans were filed by departing pilots who would then keep in contact with their company’s radio operator, relaying their position at designated waypoints with their speed and altitude. This information would then be telephoned to the center guarding the destination airport, and the airplane’s position would be marked using brass weights that were moved along the table map to represent the airplane’s progress. When an air­craft approached one of the staffed centers, direc­tions to the incoming airplane would be issued by the controller to the airline’s radio operator by telephone, who would then radio the pilot of the incoming airplane to descend to a certain alti­tude, to hold at the beacon, or that he was cleared for the approach.

The authority of the controllers was debat­able, particularly among the more independent pilots who were used to doing things their own way and in their own time. It was at first consid­ered by the pilots that the controllers’ directions to them were advisory only, not mandatory, so that a direction to hold while another aircraft landed might or might not be honored. With air traffic control being taken over by the Com­merce Department’s Bureau of Lighthouses in 1936, procedures at last began to change. Disci­pline and self-control were becoming as much a requirement of good piloting technique as air­speed and altitude.

The regulations governing aircraft control adopted by the Commerce Department were actually not known to all airlines and pilots, since they were not required to be published in the Federal Register, a publication whose pur­pose it was to advise of the adoption of agency regulations. The Supreme Court case of Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan1 established the proposition that, in order to be binding, a regulation must be published in the Federal Register as notice to all concerned. The next year, 1937, saw the first codification of air traffic regulations promulgated by the federal government. They came to be known as the Civil Air Regulations. Not only did these first regulations establish rules governing the movement of airplanes within the designated airspace, they required, for the first time, that the airlines themselves draw up a detailed operations manual, approved by the government, contain­ing procedures for that airline regarding weather, minimum altitudes, approach, departure, and en route procedures. These Department of Com­merce regulations did not apply to airport control towers, however, which remained under local city control until just before the United States entered World War II, just as the airports did themselves.

ii Before take-off, a professional pilot is keen, anxious, but lest someone read his true feelings he is elaborately casual. The reason for this is that he is about to enter a new though famil­iar world. The process of entrance begins a short time before he leaves the ground and is completed the instant he is in the air. From that moment on, not only his body but his spirit and personality exist in a sepa­rate world known only to himself and his comrades, w

Ernest K. Gann, foreword to Island in the Sky

Standardization of aircraft procedures was only one aspect of the emerging airline industry that the airlines felt needed the steady hand of government control. Passenger traffic and air­mail carriage had tripled since Black-McKellar, but the airlines were still suffering financially and had, in fact, all lost money each and every year since 1934. The airlines formed their own group, the Air Transport Association, and one of its first acts was to drum up support for and draft a bill creating federal rate and route regulation designed to stabilize the airline industry. The air­line industry was demanding to be regulated.

Government involvement in the airline busi­ness since 1925 had been inconsistent. It had been both proactive and reactive, and both tenta­tive and heavy-handed. The growth of aviation in all respects caused the airline industry in 1938 to bear little resemblance to what it was in 1925.

As the reliance on airmail subsidy gradually diminished because of the growth of freight traf­fic and passenger counts, heightened concerns about safety naturally edged forward. Insuring safety was seen as a government obligation. Like the railroads before them, the airlines were also beginning to be viewed as a national domestic resource, if not a necessity. World political and military turmoil, particularly in the Far East and in Europe, caused the government increasingly to include the aviation sector in its plans for national defense.

As a result of the Airmail Act of 1934 (Black-McKellar), government regulation was broken down into three basic jurisdictional divi­sions: the Post Office Department controlled the bidding and award of postal contracts; the Interstate Commerce Commission controlled the rates that were paid for the carriage of mail, pas­sengers, and freight by the airline carriers; and the Bureau of Air Commerce within the Depart­ment of Commerce controlled the issuance and enforcement of safety regulations. This arrange­ment was cumbersome, divisive, and increas­ingly ineffective.

Never a supporter of the New Deal or Franklin D. Roosevelt, although he was a Demo­cratic senator from Nevada, Pat McCarran felt that the regulation of aviation should be central­ized. In 1935 he wrote a bill to place full control of the airline industry with the Interstate Com­merce Committee, in part to rectify what the Roosevelt Administration and the Black commit­tee had done by the 1934 Airmail Act. The 1934 Act was regarded as punitive to the airlines, and concentrated on limiting rates and eliminating excess profits. In the House, Clarence Lea, from California, introduced a bill to create an indepen­dent Bureau for Aviation within the Executive Branch. These moves were opposed by the Post Office Department and the Department of Com­merce, both of which would lose important con­trol, influence, and funding under centralization.

Vigorous debate roiled the Senate and House as members sought to ensure that the airlines and routes that served their states and districts would not be adversely affected and that any advantages to their constituents would not be lost. Neither bill received necessary support for passage because of these turf battles until 1938, when both bills were passed and then sent to joint committee conferences for the resolution of differences, from which emerged the Civil Aero­nautics Act of 1938, the McCarran-Lea Act. The statute passed by Congress on June 23, 1938 pro­vided a uniform basis of regulation for aviation in the United States and created three indepen­dent agencies to discharge the statute’s mandate: the Civil Aeronautics Authority, the Administra­tor of Aviation, and the Air Safety Board.

“Civilian aviation,” wrote President Roos­evelt on January 24, 1939, “is clearly recognized as the back log of national defense in the Civil Aeronautics Act which set up the effective machinery for a comprehensive national policy with respect to the air.”

“Underlying the statute is the principle that the country’s welfare in time of peace and its safety in time of war rest upon the existence of a stabi­lized aircraft production—an economically and technically sound air transportation system, both domestic and overseas—an adequate supply of well trained civilian pilots and ground personnel.” “This new national policy set up by the Con­gress views American aviation as a special prob­lem requiring special treatment. .. . One fact which stands out is that hardly another civil activity of our people bears such a direct and intimate relation to the national security as does civil aviation.”

Problems quickly arose with the new statu­tory setup. The jurisdiction and authority of the three agencies created by the Act (the Civil Aero­nautics Authority, the Administrator of Aviation, and the Air Safety Board) overlapped, causing friction and inefficiencies in meeting the man­dates of the Act. The president shortly ordered an investigation into these problems. Within a period of two years from its passage, Congress enacted the 1940 Amendment to the Civil Aeronautics Act, which dissolved the three agencies origi­nally created by the Act and redistributed their functions between two new agencies that would administer the Act for the next 20 years.

rior to the creation of the Department of Transportation, the broad function of the administration of transportation fell to the Under­secretary of Commerce for Transportation. The Department of Commerce, a cabinet-level execu­tive department under the direction of a secretary and also a member of the president’s cabinet, had been the catch-all repository for the various forms of transportation. The nation’s regulation of trans­portation was administered by agencies, like the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Civil Aeronautics Administration, within the department created to deal with specific modes of transporta­tion. Aviation matters had been removed from the Commerce Department by the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 so that, in 1966, both the CAB and the Federal Aviation Agency (formerly the CAA) were independent agencies. Others remained within the Commerce Department. Administration of the nation’s transportation system was fragmented. Some transportation modes were over-funded and over-regulated, while others were under-funded and operated under a system of benign neglect. Debate on the bill was lively, given that many bureaucrats, with their supporters in Congress, had long staked out their turf with respect to their own agencies and authority. The maritime industry opposed the bill, and some in the Federal Aviation

Agency voiced fears that its newly won indepen­dent status (by the Federal Aviation Act of 1958) would be lost. Nevertheless, by October 1966, a compromise had been reached, and President John­son signed the bill into law. It was known as the Department of Transportation Act of 1967.

The needs of the country from the earliest times were seen as including an efficient and accessible transportation infrastructure. But no overall plan had ever emerged to develop or administer transportation.

In 1965, the then-administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency, Najeeb Halaby, recommended to planners in the Johnson Administration that a cabinet-level Department of Transportation be created based, in part, on his experience as head of that agency. For one thing, Halaby believed that the Federal Aviation Agency had been frozen out of the deliberations surrounding the admin­istration’s consideration of a supersonic aircraft transport program. To Halaby, this aviation endeavor was something that the FAA should be consulted on. He wrote to President Johnson that there existed “. .. no point of responsibility below the president capable of taking an evenhanded, comprehensive, authoritarian approach to the development of transportation policies. . .” and that no means existed “. . . to ensure reasonable

coordination and balance among the various trans­portation programs of the government.”

Others in the Johnson Administration also saw the need for unification of transportation activities, legislation, and oversight. At the urgings of Joseph A. Califano, Jr., Special Assistant to the President, and Charles Schultze, Director of the Bureau of the Budget, a special Task Force was created to explore the wisdom and feasibility of creating such a cabinet-level department. In Octo­ber 1965, Alan S. Boyd, then Undersecretary of Commerce for Transportation, and who had been appointed to head the Task Force, forwarded to the president recommendations that included the cre­ation of a Department of Transportation. The Task Force report further recommended that all separate sub-agencies that dealt with transportation matters be included in the proposed department. Represen­tative of these were the Federal Aviation Agency, the Bureau of Public Roads, the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and the Panama Canal Administration.

Legislation was forwarded to Congress on March 6, 1966, with a letter from Johnson in which he stated: “America today lacks a coordi­nated transportation system that permits travelers and goods to move conveniently and efficiently from one means of transportation to another, using the best characteristics of each.” The thrust of the proposed legislation sought to create one venue for the coordination and management of gov­ernment-funded transportation programs, and to provide a center for the development of a national transportation policy and its administration.

Debate on the bill was lively, given that many bureaucrats, with their supporters in Con­gress, had long staked out their turf with respect to their own agencies and authority. The maritime industry opposed the bill, and some in the Federal Aviation Agency voiced fears that its newly won independent status (by the Federal Aviation Act of 1958) would be lost. Nevertheless, by October 1966, a compromise had been reached, and Presi­dent Johnson signed the bill into law.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) began operations on April 1, 1967, becom­ing the fourth-largest cabinet-level department within the United States government. It com­bined over thirty transportation agencies and functions, and their employees, who numbered some 95,000. During the organizational phase of setting up the DOT were born the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal High­way Administration, and the Federal Railroad Administration. DOT absorbed functions that previously belonged to departments other than Commerce. Urban mass transit, for example, was removed from the Department of Hous­ing and Urban Development, which in turn caused the creation of additional agencies (the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, later renamed the Federal Transit Administra­tion). The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was created, which assumed the inves­tigative responsibilities formerly carried out by the CAB’s Bureau of Aviation Safety. The administration of aviation was placed in the new department and named the Federal Aviation Administration.