Category AVIATION &ТНЕ ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

t was not long after the Wright brothers were first successful in marketing their airplane to the French and to the U. S. Army, in 1908 and 1909, that the idea occurred to someone in the Post Office Department that the airplane could be useful in delivering the mail—and faster than the railroads. Federal funding for airmail deliv­ery was not forthcoming in spite of a bill intro­duced in Congress in 1910 by Congressman Morris Sheppard for that purpose. Beginning in 1911 without specific government funding, lim­ited experimentation with airplanes hauling mail (15 pounds a load) was initiated. Congress was not convinced that the entire process of flying mail to a point over a United States Post Office, and dropping it from various heights to the ground, was not too hare-brained to be dignified by appropriations. Only in 1916 did Congress finally approve limited funding ($50,000 from the “Steamship Fund”) for the establishment of a trial airmail route, in large part because of the rapid improvement in the reliability of aircraft. In 1918, specific funding was finally approved (the Sheppard bill had been hung up in Congres­sional debate for eight years) with a $100,000 appropriation for the purchase, operation, and maintenance of airplanes for use by the Post Office Department.

A Rough Beginning

Operations began by using airplanes and pilots furnished by the Army Signal Corps. It soon was clear that the airmail experiment was, in reality, a training device and exercise for the Army, and that delivery of the mail often amounted to an afterthought. It also became clear that the lack of training and experience of Army pilots, particu­larly in cross-country flying and navigation, was going to be a problem. Otto Praeger was Second Assistant Postmaster General of the United States from 1915 to 1921. He believed that the carriage of mail by air would be a logical next step in mail service to the country, and he also believed that the carrying of mail would have the secondary benefit of proving the use of the airplane for com­mercial purposes. After World War I, it seemed that business interests in the United States could not figure out how to put the airplane to any ben­eficial or productive purpose. This was the age of barnstormers, daredevils, adventurers, and a sideshow mentality that overshadowed most other thinking on the subject of airplanes. Banner tow­ing, the selling of rides, and the occasional charter hop from one municipality to another was about the extent of commercial benefit associated with aviation. Besides, flying was fraught with danger.

The aircraft available after World War I were numerous, but they were mostly JN-4s, the latest version of which was the H model. This airplane had an average speed of 50 miles per hour, 60 tops, and could carry some 150 pounds of mail. The route fixed as the first experimen­tal airmail route was between New York and Washington, D. C., a distance of 218 miles, with an intermediate stop at Philadelphia, and the date set for its inauguration was May 15, 1918. Airplanes would depart both New York and Washington at the same time. In Washington, President Woodrow Wilson was in attendance, attesting to the magnitude and portent of the event, as was Otto Praeger and other Post Office dignitaries. (See Figure 10-1.)

The pilot selected for the Washington depar­ture, Lt. George Boyle, was chosen more for his family contacts than for either his experience or his skill. (See Figure 10-2.) As the presi­dent watched, Lt. Boyle called “contact” and the propeller was pulled through for start, but nothing happened. After several attempts, amid an embarrassing silence from the august assem­bly, someone thought to check the airplane’s gas tank. It was empty. Upon being filled, the engine coughed to life and presently brand-new airmail pilot Boyle was finally airborne, and the airmail service had been launched, much to the relief of the Post Office and Army officials gath­ered there. (See Figure 10-3.) But there was yet another problem.

A pilot wishing to fly from Washington to Philadelphia is required to follow a generally northerly course, owing to the fact that Phila­delphia is north of Washington. Lt. Boyle, how­ever, turned to the south shortly after take off and landed in a pasture farther away from Phil­adelphia than where he started. The day was saved by the southbound mail, which arrived in Washington 3 hours and 20 minutes after it left New York. The second leg of the northbound route, from Philadelphia to New York, was sal­vaged when Boyle’s difficulties became known,

whereupon the second-leg pilot loaded his air­plane with Philadelphia mail and took off for New York.

Ш Scheduled Airmail Service

The experimental airmail service continued for about three months, until August 10, 1918, with an impressive record of 88% completion of flights attempted. The experiment using Army personnel had come to an end, and since it was the intention of the Post Office to use civilian pilots to operate the new, permanent airmail sys­tem, six new pilots were hired and new planes were put in service. (See Figure 10-4.) On August 12, 1918, the world’s first regularly scheduled airmail service was begun between New York
and Washington. On May 15, 1919, service was commenced between Cleveland and Chicago, the first segment of what was to ultimately become the transcontinental airmail route of the United States Post Office. Service on the segment from New York to Cleveland was deferred due to the adverse terrain, the Allegheny Mountains, which lay between those two cities.1 Attempts to inau­gurate that service in December 1918 had failed due to the fact that every airplane sent aloft had been forced down by weather. But by July 1, 1919, that service had been begun as well. The

New York-Chicago route segment would come to be known as the “graveyard run,” and it would claim the lives of 18 airmail pilots.

The mail was mostly flown in Curtiss Jen – nys from the beginning of experimental service, but it was clear that more powerful and larger airplanes were needed. The Army had developed an appreciation for Glenn Martin’s airplanes during World War I, and was about to order the improved MB-2 bomber when the Post Office took over airmail delivery from the Army. In 1919, the Post Office applied some of the Con­gressional airmail appropriation to order six Mar­tin MPs (mail planes), specially designed with nose cargo compartments capable of holding up to 1,500 pounds of mail, which were put into ser­vice in 1919 and 1920. Pilots crashed four of the new Post Office MPs on the New York to Chi­cago route, and the Post Office finally transferred the other two to the Army Signal Corps.

The Jennys gave way to the De Havilland DH-4 with Liberty engines, also leftovers from the war, that had earned the name “flying coffins” because of their propensity to catch fire on crash­ing, a not uncommon occurrence. (See Figures 10-5 and 10-6.) These planes generally had as

instrumentation an airspeed indicator, an altimeter of sorts, and an oil compass. The planes had to be flown visually, by reference to horizon, sky, and land outside of the cockpit. Navigation was also by outside reference, referred to as “pilotage,” “contact flying,” or “ded reckoning.”2 Landmarks on the ground were the prime navigational refer­ence for these early cross-country pilots, and when clouds or fog obscured these, finding one’s way became problematical, indeed. The airmail service did not operate at night; the mailbags were deliv­ered to the trains for continuation of the journey until the next day, when once again the mail flew.

These two incapacities severely hampered the fledgling airmail service from fulfilling its promise.

• First, the lack of instrumentation to fly “blind,” or by instruments alone, was a problem that had to be addressed by the aircraft manufactur­ers, their vendors, and by the pilots themselves.

• Second, the lack of any land-based naviga­tional infrastructure by which airplanes might find their way at night or in adverse weather conditions was a problem too big for indi­viduals or the fledgling aircraft community.

A navigational infrastructure was an under­taking for government.

The first airmail pilots (see Figures 10-4 and 10-7), like Max Miller and Wesley Smith, began pushing the limits of “blind” flying, usually in order to extricate themselves from situations inadvertently encountered, like flying into clouds or fog. Smith is said to have taken a half empty bottle of whiskey aloft, which he placed on top of his instrument panel, to practice flying wings level with the whiskey level. Soon, he found that a curved tube filled with liquid and containing a ball, like a carpenter’s level, was available, and this he fastened to his instrument panel. And so it went. It was found that turns made at a con­stant, steady rate could be timed and the airplane could be rather accurately rolled out on prede­termined headings. Sperry introduced a two-axis gyroscopic instrument that allowed a pilot to determine whether his airplane had inadvertently entered a turn. This was followed up with a three- axis instrument that showed changes in pitch attitude.

Immediately after passage of the legislation, Brown summoned to Washington representatives from the major lines around the country, who assembled in the Postmaster General’s office on May 19, 1930. It was his belief, he said, that the mail should be carried by substantial, established air carriers, the vast majority of which fell within the ownership of the three largest holding com­panies, United Aircraft & Transport Corporation, North American Aviation, and Aviation Corpora­tion. He explained his master plan to them in con­junction with the expressed and unexpressed terms of the new law. He decreed that there could be no monopoly of transcontinental service, but that competition along that route would be required, to the dismay of United. Brown explained, in effect, that the country would be carved up among a few lines, with United flying the transcontinental route to San Francisco, another line flying the New York-Los Angeles route by way of Pittsburgh and St. Louis, and still another line proceeding from New York via Washington, Atlanta, and Dal­las, thence on to Los Angeles. He also outlined a north-south route along the east coast. He told the representatives in attendance that they should decide among themselves who would take which routes.

Brown brought in William P. MacCracken, aviation’s first regulator as head of the Bureau of Aeronautics in the Commerce Department in 1926, to monitor the ensuing meetings among the carrier representatives in attendance. Not surprisingly, the strong-willed leaders of the industrial and financial interests that controlled these carriers were unable to agree among them­selves, as directed by the Postmaster General, as to how the country should be split up. Represen­tatives of the carriers remained in Washington, attending meetings with each other, until June 4, 1930. On that date, the carriers reported to the Postmaster General that they were unable to agree on allocating the five major routes in the country, including the transcontinental routes, and submitted the issues back to Brown. The carriers advised the Postmaster General that they would agree to be bound by his decision as to the route awards.

During June and July 1930, negotiations and correspondence continued between the parties with a view toward an agreement that would be fair to all concerned and that would take care of smaller lines having some “equity” due to their “pioneering” efforts. Brown suggested that the central transcontinental route should go to the beleaguered TAT, the plane and train airline, which had been flying without airmail subsidy. TAT had no night flying experience, however, and was ineligible for consideration for the trans­continental route because Brown had added this experience requirement under his “discretion­ary” authority. Western Air Express, however, did have the requisite night flying experience. Brown, in effect, ordered the merger of TAT with Western Air Express. This merged airline was to be TWA, or Transcontinental and West­ern Air. As consolation for sacrificing its inde­pendence, Western Air Express was allowed to survive as an independent entity and retain its passenger service between San Diego and Los Angeles, and between Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.

United kept its New York-San Francisco route through Chicago, and was allowed to expand northwest. Eastern was assigned New York-Miami, along with Atlanta, New Orleans, and Houston. TWA got New York-Los Angeles through St. Louis and Kansas City. American would fly New York-Los Angeles via Nash­ville, Dallas, and points in the Southwest. Thus were the “Big Four” (United, Eastern, TWA, and American) born.

Although the smaller lines were not invited to the meetings in May, the Post Office-carrier conferences were no secret. The Post Office had even put out a press release about the whole affair. Representatives of several small operators showed up, including Southwest Air Fast Express (SAFE), owned by oilman Erie Halliburton, Pittsburgh Aviation Industries, U. S. Air Transport, Curtiss Flying Service, Delta Air Service, and Thompson Aeronautical Cor­poration. During the summer of 1930, prior to the request for bids being sent out by the Post Office, discussions and negotiations continued. The financial interests of some of the smaller lines were taken into consideration, like SAFE and Delta, and mergers and buyouts were agreed to between them and the larger carriers who would be serving the routes on which the smaller lines had “pioneered.” The parties even agreed that Walter Folger Brown would be the arbiter of the value of the stock transactions made to complete the arrangements. Some of the smaller operators received “extensions” of the major routes as additional consideration for the overall agreement.

The airlines paid lip service to the require­ments of the Watres Act by going through the motions of competitive bidding with all of the carriers duly submitting bids. The only thing was, none of the Big Four submitted compet­ing bids on the routes that had been assigned by Brown to others. Lower bids on the assigned routes submitted by small carriers were rejected as “not responsible.” In this way, modern com­mercial aviation was born.

Hindsight will not compel a uniform judg­ment of Brown’s actions. It cannot be doubted that the struggling world of commercial avia­tion was given a mighty boost by the arrange­ments put in place, and that it evolved at a much accelerated pace over what would otherwise have been the case. At the end of Brown’s tenure in 1933, passenger traffic was rising, and the air­lines were competing on their transcontinental routes. The cost to the government was less than it had been 4 years before, down from an aver­age of $1.10 per mile in 1929 to half that in 1933, $.54 per mile. The airlines were in good shape financially. It is clear, therefore, that the public interest was served. As we shall see in the next chapter, the 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States (he assumed office in 1933) would have a profound effect on the new commercial aviation com­munity. The allocation of airmail routes and the award of airmail contracts would be the subject of a political Congressional investigation, and Walter Folger Brown, himself, would be the sub­ject of intense scrutiny and criticism.

No evidence would be adduced that would even suggest any financial or material gain by Brown. His actions appear to have been the result of a sincere desire to promote aviation, and he did so with success. It is, however, beyond dis­pute that the procedures employed by Brown were outside of the requirements of the Watres Act. The Congress did not remove the require­ment of competitive bidding in 1930, yet that requirement was not observed. The bill that was passed by Congress had removed consideration being given to “pioneering” efforts of some of the operators, yet such consideration was given. But, with the aid of hindsight, it can be seriously argued that his vision for the future of aviation was far superior to any of his peers’.

Although the results of Brown’s actions would be undone at the beginning of the next administration, the reality is that the Big Four put in place by the Brown policy were still the Big Four for the ensuing 48 years, until deregulation in 1978, in fact. It was then, in 1978, that the country would finally have the chance to glimpse what might have happened during the 1930s had it not been for Walter Brown.

Endnotes

1. Sobel, Coolidge, An American Enigma, Regnery Publishing, Inc. 1998.

2. For a more detailed discussion of NACA, see Chapter 15.

3. See Appendix 4 for details of Lindbergh’s flight, including hourly log entries.

4. Lindbergh served as technical advisor to Pan American for 45 years.

5. See Appendix 5.

6. Moolman, Valerie, Women Aloft, Time Life Books, 1981.

7. By contrast, the around the world flight in 1938 by How­ard Hughes was 14,456 miles in length, incorporating the itinerary New York-Paris-Moscow-Omsk-Yakutsk-Fairbanks – Minneapolis-New York. Except for New York, Paris, and Minneapolis, all stops were above 55 degrees north latitude. Hughes’ flight set a new around the world speed record of 3 days, 19 hours, and 8 minutes, beating both of Wiley Post’s world records of 8 days and 16 hours in

1931 and 7 days 19 hours in 1933 along a route similar to that flown by Howard Hughes in 1938.

8. In 2012, the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) began its 11th expedition to Nikuma- roro (formerly Gardner Island) in search of evidence of Earhart’s aircraft. An underwater search of the waters off the western end of the island was conducted using unmanned submersibles. This coral atoll is about 400 miles southeast of Howland Island, which was Earhart’s intended destination. Although TIGHAR departed the area with no known positive results from their underwater search, in August 2012 TIGHAR announced that a review of high-definition video footage taken during the expedi­tion revealed aircraft parts similar to Earhart’s Lockheed Electra. Further analysis will be required to correlate this find definitively to Earhart.

9. An Account of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company 1925-1950, Frederick B. Rentschler, 1950, Pratt & Whitney Archives, East Hartford, CT.

10. See discussion of Pan American in Chapter 15.

As the sole American airline with prewar opera­tions overseas, Pan American became an impor­tant asset of the United States during World War II. Pan American operated flying boats, in part, because of the lack of airfields. But Pan Am also had experience in building airfields in remote areas. Roosevelt had secured rights to bases on many of the islands of the Caribbean from the British under the “Destroyers for Bases Agree­ment.” He now called upon Pan American to build airfields on these islands as a part of a larger plan to supply the war effort against Ger­many. Airports would be built down through the Caribbean to South America and along its east coast, for ferrying equipment and supplies across the Atlantic narrows to Africa. The British were engaging the Germans in North Africa, and North Africa would be the location of America’s first military engagements in World War II. Although the United States paid for all of the airport con­struction (over $90 million), Pan American held title to these facilities initially for appearance purposes since the United States was diplomati­cally neutral prior to its entry into the war. After the war, negotiations caused these improvements to revert to the United States, but with limitations on their use by airlines other than Pan Am.

The Airlines at War

At the beginning of the war, there were only some 365 commercial transport aircraft in the United States. The airplane manufacturing community would shortly begin to produce 50,000 aircraft a year, the largest manufacturing activity in the United States during the war, and at war’s end over 300,000 airplanes would have been produced. America’s main contribution was in production, not development, for the existing fighter and trans­port aircraft designs were considered sufficient, at least in the short run, to win the war if only there were enough of them. The P-51 Mustang was the only new development in airplane technology sup­plied by the United States after the onset of war.

The main production effort was, of course, directed toward fighter and bomber aircraft, although over 10,000 DC-3s, designated for the military as C-47s, were built, along with over

1,0 DC-4s (as C-54s). America needed every bit of transport potential it could muster during the years 1941-1945, including railroads as well as air carriers, and while the railroads enjoyed a resurgence of their former glory during these years, the air carriers came into their own for the first time. Aircrews flew everywhere, either as military or civilian to military or civilian airports, on domestic and overseas routes. Flying trans­oceanic routes became routine.

TWA, the only airline with land-based four – engine aircraft at the beginning of the war, set up a training center at government direction in New Mexico for instructing American and British pilots how to fly the four engine bombers, the B-24 and the B-17. (TWA had purchased the new Boeing Stratoliner, the 307, in 1940.) Pan American also contributed to four engine train­ing, sharing its pilots’ experience in long-range ocean and celestial navigation. (See Figure 17-1.)

Domestically, the airlines discovered after the onset of hostilities that they had only 165 air­planes to service their routes. The armed forces had commandeered the rest for military purposes. Travel space on the relatively few air carrier air­craft was allocated according to a government imposed “priority system”:

• Priority One was for persons traveling under the authority of the president.

• Priority Two got military pilots a seat.

• Priority Three was other military personnel or civilians on essential wartime business.

• Priority Four was military cargo.

The remaining seats, of which there were precious few, went to everyone else. The lexi­con of future airline travel was being established too. “Standbys” were those who hoped a priority above them would become a “no-show” so that a seat would become available. To be “bumped” was to have a higher priority passenger show up to take your seat.

American air carriers began to make money for the first time since 1934, and although the high load factor of domestic commercial opera­tions contributed to profitability, the main effort of the airlines during the war was as contract car­riers for the military.

The government allocated the airlines’ responsibility during the war in logical fashion. Northeast Airlines was given the North Atlantic route as far as Greenland and then Reykjavik, Iceland. Northwest was assigned to the Alaska route, Eastern to the Caribbean and Brazil. American flew to South America and, in the process, caused a radio range to be built along its route from the United States. TWA had its five Boeing 307s, the only four-engine land-based transoceanic aircraft available at the time, com­mandeered by the military and was given the transatlantic route to Egypt, the most significant long distance route of any airline except Pan

American. TWA set up its transcontinental divi­sion immediately at the beginning of the war, no doubt with an eye on the postwar period. At first, TWA flew to Africa via the South American route, and later, after Portugal granted landing rights, via the much shorter North Atlantic route by way of Prestwick, Scotland. TWA flew mili­tary supplies and equipment, like the other air­lines, but it was the preferred carrier for VIPs and, in fact, TWA carried President Roosevelt to the three wartime conferences with Churchill in Casablanca, Tehran, and Yalta.

It is not surprising that Pan American, as the only overseas carrier in existence before the war, was counted on as the major civilian arm of the military during the war. Yet, it is noteworthy that Pan American’s five divisions, the Alaskan, Pacific, North Atlantic, Caribbean, and Africa-Orient, flew half of all contract miles flown by all airlines for the U. S. mili­tary. In the process, Pan American began flying landplanes instead of the flying boats that had been its trademark during its early years, thus marking the end of the romantic and adven­turous era of the Pan American Clipper. The range and speed of the DC-4 and the airplanes to follow, the availability of the airports that Pan American and others had built around the
world, and the relative high maintenance costs and requirements of amphibious planes over landplanes sounded the death knell of the flying boat airliner, and Pan American never ordered another one.

Most of the flying done during World War II was not by the personnel of the commercial airlines but by the military forces created and trained by the government. The exigencies of war, shown once again to be a mighty moti­vating force, had caused a great technological leap forward in aircraft, engines, and systems. The feats of the non-combat pilots of the mili­tary lift branches, some 25,000 of them, during the four-year duration of the war testify to the great advance in air transportation over that short span of time. Feats only imagined a mere four years before were now commonplace. Distances had been covered and heights had been over­come for the first time in the airborne delivery of personnel and goods that would henceforth be considered routine. There was a confidence born not only of victory, but also of studied accomplishment.

Contrasted to the unspeakable devasta­tion visited on the landscapes and structures of Europe that had been created by the world’s most advanced civilization for the better part of two millennia, the homeland of the United States emerged from the war unscathed, and with the robust industrial complex that had supplied the weapons and material of war intact. America had:

• The pilots

• The planes

• The know-how

• The international presence on the ground

• The financial structure and stability to lead the world into the postwar realms of com­mercial aviation.

And the United States was ready to use all

of it.

Endnotes

1. Gann, Ernest K., Fate is the Hunter, Simon and Shuster, New York, NY, 1961.

2. Simon and Shuster, 1961.

Under the provisions of the FAA Reauthoriza­tion Act of 2012, the FAA has been directed to develop regulations to facilitate the widespread use of UAS within the United States and to pre­sent its plan to do so to Congress by the end of 2012. The FAA has announced that it will authorize at least six UAS test sites in the United States, and has created the Unmanned Aircraft Program Office (UAPO) to oversee the devel­opment of procedures, standards, and policies that will govern this activity. These sites will be operational sometime in 2013. The FAA says that it plans to fully integrate flights of UAVs into the NAS by September 30, 2015. But this conclu­sion presumes that issues of privacy and possible encroachments on 4th Amendment rights will have been settled by then. As of this writing, it appears that a battle may be looming over the general deployment of drones over the United States.

Investigation

The FAA conducts investigations of aircraft acci­dents subordinate to and in cooperation with the National Transportation Safety Board pursuant to an arrangement known as the Accident Investiga­tion Selectivity Program. This program is formal­ized in an agreement between the NTSB and the FAA and is designed to delineate responsibility in accident investigations and to avoid conflicts.2 Previously, separate investigations conducted by the NTSB and the FAA sometimes resulted in contrary findings and conclusions, and were the occasion for embarrassment to one or both agencies.

The types of accidents investigated by the FAA are normally limited to general aviation accidents or those that, by comparison to air­line accidents, are relatively limited in scope or impact in the aviation community. It should be noted that the objectives of an FAA investigation are different from those of the NTSB. In par­ticular, the FAA is looking for violations of the FARs, and it scrutinizes whether the accident was a result of deviations from standards adopted by the FAA. FAA investigations seek to determine whether FAA facilities were a factor and whether the FARs were adequate. The FAA also investi­gates aircraft incidents that do not result in acci­dents, such as “near misses” by passing aircraft or other instances when aviation safety may have been jeopardized. The FAA is also mandated by Congress to investigate all reports of violations of the FARs.

As a result of the hearings, President Ford caused the resignation of the Chairman of the CAB, Robert Timm, and in early 1975 appointed John

Robson, an Undersecretary at the Department of Transportation and a career bureaucrat, in his place. Although Robson knew little about the airline industry, he set about to remedy the short­comings and failures that had been disclosed in the Kennedy hearings, including the liberaliza­tion of charter rules and the approving of new routes, which continued during Robson’s tenure at the CAB. A CAB staff report was issued in July 1975 recommending deregulation within five years. Incredibly, in April 1976, all of the CAB commissioners announced that they sup­ported deregulation.

The changes kept coming under what was now known as “de facto deregulation.” Liberal­ization of charter rules had these operations fly­ing more routes, longer distances, and with fewer restrictions, thus creating immediate competition for the scheduled airlines. This, in turn, caused the scheduled airlines to make application to the CAB for permission to make a legitimate, long – range competitive response to the charterers. The CAB then began granting those applications, thereby setting up an incipient competition there­tofore unknown under regulation. Airlines were then allowed to unilaterally raise or lower prices “within zones of reasonableness,” and on speci­fied routes, they could enter or exit without prior authority.

The CAB had no jurisdiction over intrastate carriers like Southwest Airlines, and although Southwest could charge what it pleased subject only to the rules of the Texas Public Utilities Commission, its fares were substantially less than those mandated under the CAB regimen. Southwest was stiff competition for any air­line flying within the borders of Texas and that competition included interstate carriers Texas International and American Airlines. When Texas International sought CAB authority for its “peanut fares,” (its regular CAB-mandated fare discounted 50 percent) in order to com­pete with Southwest, the CAB obliged. Again, when American Airlines wanted to institute its “Supersaver” fare in March 1977, a charter-like discount theretofore prohibited by CAB phi­losophy, the CAB approved. Significantly, the “Supersaver” fares applied to seats on regularly scheduled flights on which standard fare pas­sengers had purchased tickets. Thus began the confusing and seemingly inequitable pattern of full-fare passengers seated beside someone who had paid a fraction of full fare. These low fares also invited into the cabin leisure passen­gers, bringing with them their small children and babies, to occupy the center seat previously left unfilled. American Airline’s coast-to-coast traffic soon increased by 61 percent.

Word spread and the trend continued as Allegheny Airlines instituted “Simple Saver” fares and TWA started “Super-Jackpot” fares to Las Vegas. By 1978, discount fares were widely available, prices had fallen by 8 percent, and air traffic had increased by 17 percent. Whether noticed or not, deregulation had already begun.

To fly has been a dream, although an elusive dream, of humankind from time immemorial. Through the ages, mockingly the birds of the air swirled and swooped with graceful ease over earthbound man. Man continued to look to the sky, and to dream on. The first flights of man were not to be patterned after the winged crea­tures; that had proven over the millennia to be too complex. Man’s first exploration aloft was the result of the observations of two wealthy French brothers, Jacques-Etienne and Joseph – Michel Montgolfier, who happened to be paper – makers in Annonay, France. They observed that fire seemed to have the quality of supporting certain light solid objects, like paper, and that they were borne aloft on what they theorized was a lighter than air gas. Experimentation led to the first hot air balloon ascent in 1783. This was followed that same year by a successful two-hour flight of a balloon filled with hydrogen gas, the brainchild of a French chemist, Jacques- Alexandre-Cesar Charles. Hydrogen gas had been first isolated in 1766 by the British chemist Henry Cavendish. The first ascent by humans in a balloon was also recorded in 1783 near Paris, piloted by Jean-Francois de Rozier.

Within two years, there were people who called themselves “aeronauts,” and who devoted significant effort to getting off the ground and going somewhere. In 1785, aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard, accompanied by an American, John

Jeffries, made the first successful crossing of the English Channel from Dover to Calais.

Balloons immediately found a use as obser­vation platforms during the French Revolu­tion and, later, during the American Civil War. (See Figure 5-1.) War again provided func­tion to the balloons in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) as observation vehicles, and even as an escape vehicle when French minister Leon Gambetta floated out of the besieged city of Paris to the very great consternation of the opposing forces. Progressing from war to war, it seems, once again balloons were used for observation in World War I, but now they were joined by, and opposed by, fighter aircraft.

Until the modern age, the record for dis­tance traveled in piloted balloons stood from 1914, when the balloon Berliner covered a dis­tance of 1,896 miles from Bitterfeld, Germany to

Perm, Russia. Toward the middle and latter 20th century, extraordinary feats have accompanied balloon flight. In 1960, Capt. Joe Kittinger of the U. S. Air Force ascended in a polyethylene balloon to an altitude of 102,800 feet, setting an altitude record. Fie then bailed out of the gondola to set a free-fall parachute descent record for the time. The balloon altitude record was broken the next year during an ascent to 113,700 feet. In 1984, Kittinger piloted a 3,000 cubic meter bal­loon from Caribou, Maine to Cairo Montenotte, Italy, covering 3,543 miles. He thus became the first, and only, person to solo a balloon across the Atlantic Ocean. Kittenger’s free-fall para­chute jump record stood for over 50 years until broken by the Austrian, Felix Baumgartner, on October 12, 2012. Although the Kittinger ascent and jump was a government project (United States Air Force), the Baumgarnter adventure was funded by the Austrian company Red Bull GmbH, which produces the eponymous energy drink, Red Bull; Kissinger served as technical advisor on the project. Baumgartner also became the first man to break the sound barrier without an airplane, reaching an unofficial speed of mach 1.24 in freefall.

It was one thing to have these new tools available; it was yet another thing altogether to be able to use them in actual flight. U. S. Army pilot William C. Ocker nearly crashed one day in 1918 testing the Sperry turn indicator. He could not convince himself to trust these new instruments instead of his senses, as he and every other military pilot had been taught: “Ignore them”; “Fly by the seat of your pants,” they were told. Pilots who relied on anything other than a magnetic compass and the altimeter were considered lightweight and weak.

During a routine Army physical exam in 1926, Ocker was subjected to a Jones-Barany chair, which is a spinning, swiveling seat designed to measure balance and equilibrium. When deprived of his visual cues, he naturally became completely disoriented and confused. He could not tell if he was stationary or spinning, or which way. With the doctor’s help, he practiced using the turn indicator and a pen light rigged up in a shoe box as he was spun around. Watch­ing only inside the box, he could tell the doctor which way he was going, and how fast. This

device, the “Ocker Box,” became the first blind flying trainer. (See Figure 10-8.)

In spite of the Army’s refusal to teach instrument flying, Ocker became something of an advocate, and convinced many pilots of the worth of his designs. The Army forced Ocker to undergo psychological exams for his pen­chant for sitting in spinning chairs. He invented the idea of the covered cockpit, used by Jimmy Doolittle for a flight around the pattern in 1929, but Ocker made the first cross-country flight in a completely covered cockpit on June 24, 1930, flying 900 miles from Brooks Field, Texas to Scott Field, Illinois.

Pan American pilots soon began using Ocker’s techniques and instruments. In 1932, in cooperation with Col. Carl Crane, he published the world’s first instrument flight manual, Blind Flight in Theory and Practice. The Soviet Air Force adopted the book before the U. S. Army did. Orville Wright called him a “missionary” and he considered among his friends Eddie Rick – enbacker, Billy Mitchell, and Jimmy Doolittle. A year after his death in 1942, the Army made his training procedures standard for all military pilots.3

At the same time, experimentation was proceeding on various fronts, including with

radio, not only as a means of voice communi­cation from air to ground, but also as a means of navigation. By May 15, 1920, airmail ser­vice had been extended westward from Chicago to Omaha, Nebraska, establishing a through route all the way from New York. On August 16, 1920, a route was added southward from Chicago to St. Louis. On September 8, 1920, the transcontinental route was completed to San Francisco. Although the airmail service operated only during daylight hours, the rail­road coast-to-coast mail time was bettered by 22 hours.

The promise of airmail was yet unfulfilled. Moreover, Otto Praeger was concerned that the entire airmail program might be cancelled if bet­ter results were not soon achieved. Night flying was the only way to free the airmail service from its earthbound dependence on the railroads. Fly­ing at night had been experimented with, and successfully under certain conditions, like clear, moonlit nights, for short distances. But what about transcontinental distances on a regular schedule? Could it be done?

Ш A New Broom Sweeps Clean

The Great Depression was getting seriously underway in 1933, at the time that the Republi­can Hoover Administration was vacating office and the Democratic Franklin Roosevelt Admin­istration was sweeping in with reform on its mind. Big business had ruled during the Roaring Twenties. The stock market increasingly through that decade had reflected in price the explosion in commerce and development, much money had been made and people were happy. But in 1933, the bread lines were long and were filled with disillusioned and angry men. The majority of vot­ers had voted, in effect, to “throw the bums out.” And so it was that the Democrats arrived in town with an agenda, a mandate even, to begin to set things straight. In the process, a rare opportunity was seen to make a little political hay and find out who and what was to blame for the mess the country found itself in.

Hugo Black came to the U. S. Senate in 1926 as a Democrat from Alabama, where he had enhanced his political career by winning local judicial elections and with membership in the Ku Klux Klan. While a lawyer there, he mostly sued corporations representing personal injury
claimants. He considered himself a populist, and was re-elected to the Senate in 1932. He was a supporter of Franklin Roosevelt’s bid for the presidency, and after Roosevelt’s election, he was an ardent supporter of New Deal (anti­corporate) initiatives.

In fact, the 1932 election gave the Demo­crats the control of the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House. Control of the entire government was theirs. In February 1933, Black proposed a resolution to establish a special investigatory committee to inquire into the government’s system of awarding ocean mail and airmail contracts, claiming that dur­ing the Hoover Administration they had become government giveaways to Hoover’s friends and associates. The tension between the Democrats and Republicans was only heightened during the last days of the Hoover Administration when the Democrats requested the Postmaster General to defer awarding any further mail contracts. Black had been tipped off by a reporter that the Post Office Department was planning to sign an ocean mail contract with Philadelphia Steamship Company before the Democrats had a chance to replace the Postmaster General. Walter F. Brown awarded four new contracts anyway.

The Committee began its investigation on March 4, 1933, and for four months plowed through documents and testimony without uncovering much in the way of skullduggery. In fact, it was shown that all contract awards had been approved by the guardian of the national purse, Comptroller General McCarl. When Black started digging into the airmail awards, he thought he had finally struck pay dirt when he learned of the 1930 meetings in Brown’s office with the Big Four. The press, who Time Maga­zine reported was feeding the questions to Black,1 quickly labeled those meetings “the spoils con­ferences.” The label stuck.

Small airline operators told of being excluded from the bidding process, or having their lower bids thrown out in favor of higher bids from larger carriers. Black cast his net wide. He sent out Interstate Commerce Com­mission agents with synchronized watches, armed with subpoenas to swoop down on the aviation companies without warning. When it was learned that Republican William P. Mac – Cracken (the former head of the Bureau of Aeronautics) was present at the 1930 meetings, he was subpoenaed to produce his personal files for examination. On MacCracken’s refusal, he was held in contempt of the Senate and ulti­mately jailed for 10 days by the Committee. But the main object of scorn was Walter F. Brown, whom Black saw as the author and architect of the whole scheme.

To Black, what the hearings produced was confirmation that the air carriers had exploited the public through inflated contract rates charged to the government, that the airlines’ manufac­turing arms had made huge profits from mili­tary procurement contracts, and that speculation in airline stocks had profited them all. It was not fully explained how these conclusions com­pared with the undisputed fact that the cost to the government of airmail delivery under Brown’s administration had been cut in half, from $1.10 per mile to $.54 per mile, in four years. But such are the hazards of credibility in politically motivated pursuits. Nor was it appreciated that the air carriers were stable, growing, and though still formative, rendering an air transportation service. Of what interest were airlines to a popu­lace that did not have enough to eat? This was a relevant, if short-sighted, question.

James Farley was appointed Postmaster Gen­eral in the new Roosevelt Administration. To him fell the duty of carrying out the verdict of Black, sanctioned by the president by way of presidential order, that all of the existing airmail contracts held by the airlines then operating were to be can­celled forthwith on the basis that they were fraud­ulently procured. The airmail, decreed Farley, would be carried by the Army Air Corps. All this was made official on February 9, 1934 by Execu­tive Order 6591, signed by President Roosevelt. On February 11, 1934, Charles Lindbergh sent a letter to the president that stated, in part:

“Your action of yesterday affects funda­mentally the industry to which I have devoted the last 12 years of my life. Therefore, I respect­fully present to you the following considerations. The personal and business lives of American citizens have been built up around the right to a just trial before conviction. Your order of can­cellation of all air mail contracts condemns the largest portion of our commercial aviation with­out just trial. The officers of a number of the organizations affected have not been given the opportunity of a hearing and improper acts by many companies affected have not been estab­lished. . . . Your present actions do not discrimi­nate between innocence and guilt and place no premium on honest business. . . . The United States today is far in the lead in almost every branch of commercial aviation. In America we have commercial aircraft, engines, equip­ment, and airlines superior to those of any other country. The greatest part of this progress has been brought about through the airmail. Cer­tainly. . . this development has been carried on in cooperation with the existing government and according to law. If this is not the case it seems the right of the industry and in keeping with

American tradition that facts to the contrary be definitely established. Unless these facts leave no alternative the condemnation of commercial aviation by cancellation of all mail contracts and the use of army pilots on commercial airlines will unnecessarily and greatly damage all Ameri­can aviation.”

Army pilots were basically untrained in cross-country flying and had neither knowledge of nor experience in flying the routes that the mails took across the country. Their airplanes were all open cockpits and contained few of the instruments that had become standard in just a few short years due to Brown’s enticements to the airlines. By the end of the first week of fly­ing, five pilots had been killed in accidents and six were critically injured. The Army pilots began flying only in daylight hours, thus delaying mail delivery. Within five weeks, 12 Army pilots had died. It became clear that a major mistake had been made. New bids to reinstate private carriage of the airmail were called for, but under a revised set of rules.

A temporary arrangement had to be put in place immediately, pending adoption of leg­islation. Postmaster General Farley called a meeting of airline representatives, like Wal­ter Folger Brown had done. But this time, none of the airlines involved in the “spoils conferences,” nor any of the executives who attended them, could participate in the new round of bidding. Neither could a bidding air­line be involved in the manufacture of aircraft designed to be used in the airline business, like the Boeing-Rentschler combination at United. Vertical holding companies that exercised con­trol over the actual airlines were disallowed. Rectitude reigned supreme in public, but in private, practicality ruled the day. Cosmetic name changes by the Big Four were accepted as serious compliance with the new rules, changes like American Airways becoming American Airlines and Eastern Air Transport becom­ing Eastern Air Lines. In fact, after the bids were opened on April 20, 1934, the commercial airline industry looked very much the same as it did before Black started his quest for justice the year before.

Two significant changes did occur. An upstart airline named Braniff Airways beat out United on the Dallas-Chicago route, and the crop dusting С. E. Woolman, operating as Delta Airlines, had secured the Dallas to Charleston,

S. C. route. Each of these new airlines would ulti­mately make the most of their opportunity.

Walter Brown would continue unrepen­tant and dignified amidst the righteous alarms of Black and other politicians who sought to capitalize at the expense of his reputation. The airlines whose contracts had been terminated, although back in the airmail business within a short time, had lost a significant amount of money by continuing operations in the interim, but only United Air Lines resorted to litigation against the government because of the contract cancellations. That litigation would drag out for another 10 years. And, when finally concluded, it would uphold the government’s right to terminate the airmail contracts.2 The court did, however, award money damages to the United group for contract payments earned prior to the cancella­tions. The opinion, which is 104 pages in length, is a detailed chronology of the events that trans­pired after passage of the Watres Act.

efore the war, air travel had begun to catch on, and in 1941 domestic airlines carried four million passengers. With the war over in 1945, air travel quickly picked up again, and by the end of 1945 the airlines had enplaned some 7.5 million passengers. In 1946, the num­ber almost doubled to 12.5 million passengers. The commercial airline fleet before the war pro­vided about 6,200 seats. By 1946, the airlines had tripled capacity to 19,000 available seats. The cost of airline travel had fallen enough to be competitive with first class railroad fares, and the four-hour plane ride between Chicago and New York offered a real choice for any time-sensitive traveler over the sixteen-hour railroad Pullman. It was a new day in commercial aviation.

The development of transport aircraft had progressed rapidly during the war. The expectation was that the prewar traffic would be promptly reclaimed and then exponentially developed using the new era of airliners. Some of the aircraft were suited to expanding the first class travel begun in the 1930s, particularly on the transcontinental and transoceanic runs. Mod­ern airlines of the postwar era were on the verge of entering the first class travel market long held by the steamship lines and the transcontinen­tal Pullman trains. While it was true that some
airlines using DC-3s had offered berths for sleep­ing on overnight flights, now airliners could fly much higher and faster, and in pressurized and air-conditioned comfort.

TWA launched transatlantic service on December 5, 1945, with a VIP flight to Paris that was completed in the record time of 12 hours and 57 minutes. Pressurized, and with a cruise speed of 280 miles per hour, the Connie was ready to contribute to the anticipated revolution in transat­lantic and transcontinental air travel.

The number of airports used by the airlines more than doubled between 1941 and 1947, from 2,484 to 5,343. Outside the terminals, new sleek aircraft for the first time took on the look of fly­ing in place with their new tricycle landing gear. Interspersed among the ubiquitous DC-3s that appeared to be sitting back on their haunches, these new planes stood tall over them and gave an impression of progress, comfort, and safety. The airplanes were getting larger than the termi­nals in some places. Mass transit, facilitated by the big airliners, was about to begin.

The DC-4, which had been commandeered by the military upon its appearance in 1942, became available to the domestic fleet in 1946. (See Fig­ure 18-1.) Unpressurized, seating 44 passengers and barely able to muster 200 miles per hour at

cruise, the DC-4 was out-classed by the Connie, yet it became in the late 1940s the four-engine airplane of choice. Its service during the war had proved it to be safe and reliable, something yet to be proved in the Constellation and other advanced aircraft emerging from the war. The tapered lines of the Constellation, its more complex systems, its three vertical stabilizers, and the number of parts required to be stored and available also caused it to be significantly more expensive to maintain than the DC-4. (See Figure 18-2.) The straight lines of the DC-4 proved to be much cheaper to repair, maintain, and to fly.

The availability of these new aircraft increased the airlines’ capacity and brought with them options for airline management that had never before been possible. This may be the point in history when the concept of the passenger seat as a “grapefruit,” as in a perishable commod­ity, was articulated as a marketing truism. Every unfilled seat at takeoff was like spoiled grapefruit for that flight; it was forever lost to use. Competi­tive management thinking recognized that high – density seating brought with it pure profit after boarding enough passengers to cover costs.

The scheduled airlines were, and had always been, of one class, and that was first class. When

comparisons were made between the airlines and the railroads as to cost, an airline seat was com­pared to a Pullman berth (these accommodations were seats during day travel and were converted to beds for night travel). The high cost of air travel could be favorably compared to first class rail fares because of the time-distance advantage between comparable points enjoyed by the airlines.

After the war, the CAB began loosening the regulations that bound the air-traveling public to the scheduled airlines (first class service). This allowed aircraft charter, or as some called it, the nonscheduled lines, or “nonskeds.” Using DC-3s and then DC-4s, these charter operators flew at off hours, at night, and most importantly, with full airplanes. Not bound to a schedule, these operators were not required to leave the terminal at any par­ticular time. Their schedule was simply dictated by the passenger count. And passengers flocked to them. Soon the nonskeds were going coast to coast and at prices that were 30 percent less than the scheduled airlines. They did the same thing on some international routes, notably to Puerto Rico.

Pan Am’s official name had been changed in 1945 from Pan American Airways to Pan Ameri­can World Airways. Juan Trippe was again ahead of the game and ready for the postwar contest. He saw that by seating five abreast in the DC-4, the passenger count could increase from 44 to 63. But the question remained in what market such a configuration could be put to use. And fares would certainly have to be reduced in order to induce anyone to put up with such crowding. Here, Juan Trippe was about 30 years ahead of his time, ahead of the days of deregulation that would come in 1978.

In 1948, Pan American began flying DC-4s from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was a relatively impoverished island, and most of its inhabitants could not afford expensive travel of either kind, ship or plane. The low stan­dard of living in Puerto Rico and its mortality rate combined to provide motivation to some people to leave the country. Pan Aon tapped this large market for mass air transit in the newly configured DC-4,

which had no galley and only one flight attendant. Any Puerto Rican with $75 was given the opportu­nity to begin a new life in New York, which had a Puerto Rican population of 70,000 at that time. By 1950, there would be 250 thousand Puerto Rican residents in New York City. By 1975, five million of the island’s former residents had migrated to the United States.

Domestically, the airlines were losing money to the nonskeds, so they petitioned the CAB for authority to operate a second class of service. “Air coach,” as it was called, was intro­duced by the scheduled airlines in 1948. Some of the crews began to refer to the new passengers as “cattle class.” The airlines saw that they could compete with the railroads, not just for first class passengers, but also for coach passengers. Capi­tal Airlines became the first established carrier to offer “coach-class” service, inaugurated on the New York-Chicago route. At a fare of two-thirds
the standard, there were few complaints of over­crowding, late night departures, or the lack of a meal service. TWA and American followed suit with their transcontinental service. By the end of 1951, nine domestic carriers offered coach or tourist class service to 34 cities. In 1952, fares were $99 coast-to-coast; $32 between Chicago and New York. Airline passenger traffic doubled in the five years between 1948 and 1952. By 1955, the airlines had passed the railroads for the first time in the number of passengers carried.

For a while the “coach” or “tourist” class flights operated as separate airplanes both domestically and internationally. The smaller international carriers complained to the Inter­national Air Transport Association (IATA) that they could not compete with larger airlines since they did not possess the necessary number of aircraft to operate both first class and tourist class airplanes. When IATA authorized them to
operate their equipment carrying both first class and tourist in the same airplane, the modern form of aircraft configuration was born. TWA was the first to begin domestic operations with both fare classes on the same airplane after CAB approval.

A new group of air carrier, known collec­tively as local service lines or feeder lines, com­pleted their first full year of service in 1946. While the CAB would not expand the total number of trunk airlines beyond the sixteen that were grandfathered under the Civil Aeronau­tics Act of 1938, these smaller carriers received authority to operate on short routes to some 350 small cities. The average distance flown between stops was about 60 miles, and some of the com­munities served had populations of as few as

3,0 people. By the end of 1951, there were 18 local service airlines operating 130 airplanes.

The Continent Grows Smaller

Coast-to-Coast

1840 The ox-drawn covered wagon………………………………………………………. 6 to 8 months

1846 Sailing vessels around the Horn…………………………………………………. 6…………. 1/2 months

1849 Steam vessels around the Horn…………………………………………………. 4…………. 1/2 months

1858 Overland mail coaches and rail……………………………………………………… 24-30 days…… ^3^

1861 Pony Express and rail……………………………………………………………………………. 11-13 days

1869 First transcontinental train………………………………………………………………… 7 days…. 1933

1903 First transcontinental automobile trip………………………………………………. 61 days…. 1934

1911 First transcontinental airplane trip Calbraith R Rodgers:

Sheepshead Bay, L. I. to Pasadena,………………………………………………….. California 49 days ^35

1919 First transcontinental round trip by air:

Lt. Belvin W. Maynard……………………………………………………… 9 days 4 hours 25 min. jg37

1920 First air-rail mail: NewYork-San Francisco………………………………………… 72 hours

1921 First all-air mail: San Francisco-New York………………………………. 33 hours 20 min. 1938

1923 First non-stop coast-to-coast flight:

Lts. John A. Macready and Oakley Kelly 1943

New York-San Diego, May 2-3………………………………………………….. 26 hours 50 min.

1924 Fastest transcontinental railroad trip…………………………………….. 69 hours 7 min.

Standard transcontinental railroad trip……………………………………………… 87 hours 1945

Regular air mail, day and night schedule…………………………………………… 32 hours

First dawn-to-dusk coast-to-coast flight:

Col. Russell L. Maughan, NewYork-San Francisco, June 23……… 21 hours 44 min.

1927 First coast-to-coast commercial air passengers:

NewYork-San Francisco………………………………………………………….. 31 hours 45 min.

Round-trip record by Frank Hawks:

New York-Los Angeles……………………………………………………………… 19 hours 10 min.

Los Angeles-New York……………………………………………………………… 17 hours 38 min.

First air-rail passenger service…………………………………………………………… 48 hours

New round-trip record by Frank Hawks:

Los Angeles-New York, August 12……………………………………………. 14 hours 50 min.

New York-Los Angeles, August 15……………………………………………. 12 hours 25 min.

Record by Jimmy Doolittle:

Burbank-Newark, September 4…………………………………………………. 11 hours 15 min.

Regular coast-to-coast air passenger, mail, and express schedule 19 hours 35 min.

Jack Frye and E. V. Rickenbacker in regular commercial transport plane:

Los Angeles-Newark, February 18-19……………………………………….. 13 hours 4 min.

Jack Frye with mail: Los Angeles-New York, May 8……………………. 11 hours 30 min.

Record by Leland S. Andrews and H. B. Snead:

Los Angeles-Washington, February 20…………………………………….. 10 hours 22 min.

Record by Howard Hughes:

Los Angeles-New York, January 19…………………………………. 7 hours 28 min. 25 sec.

Westbound record by A. R DeSeversky:

Brooklyn-Burbank, August 29………………………………………… 10 hours 2 min. 55 sec.

Regular schedule for passengers, mail, express…………………………………. 16 hours

New record by Howard Hughes and 17 passengers in transport plane:

Burbank-Washington, April 17……………………………………….. 6 hours 57 min. 51 sec.

Regular extra fare service:

New York-Los Angeles……………………………………………………………… 14 hours 35 min.

Record in transport plane:

Seattle-Washington, January 10……………………………………. 6 hours 3 min. 50 sec.

FIGURE 18-4 Less time to cross the continent.

Since passage of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, responsibility for carrying out enforcement proce­dures for violations of the FARs has resided with the FAA. Enforcement options open to the FAA in any given case are normally dictated by consider­ations already well-established within the agency, and are generally handled either as administrative dispositions (warning notices and letters of correc­tion) or by certificate action (suspension or revo­cation). Occasionally, civil penalties are assessed in lieu of certificate action (historically against corporations or against working pilots where cer­tificate suspension is deemed too harsh).

Operations

The FAA is charged with the operation and main­tenance of a vast array of facilities and equipment within the aviation system. We will briefly review the major categories of FAA responsibility.

Air Traffic Control

The АТС system includes airport control tow­ers, air route traffic control centers (ARTCC), terminal radar approach control (TRACON), and flight service stations (FSS).

The FAA estimates that it will lose 10,291 controllers, or about 70 percent of the controller workforce, between 2006 and 2015 due to retire­ments. The large percentage loss is due to the unlawful PATCO strike in 1981, when President Reagan fired almost 11,000 controllers. From 1982 through 1991, the FAA hired an average of 2,655 controllers each year. These controllers will become eligible for retirement during the next decade.

In 1982, the FAA began a program of out­sourcing operation at a limited number of VFR towers. As of 2006, 231 towers in 46 states par­ticipate in the FAA’s Contract Tower Program.

In 2005, the FAA entered into a contract with Lockheed Martin to operate the 58 Flight Service Stations located in the contiguous United States.

Radio Aids to Navigation

These facilities include VORs, VORTACs, instrument landing systems (ILS), and micro­wave landing systems (MLS). The Global Positioning System (GPS) is operated by the Department of Defense, and Loran C is operated by the United States Coast Guard.

In 2003, the FA A inaugurated the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) as a precursor for a new and extremely accurate navigation system. WAAS augments, or enhances, the Global Posi­tioning System in order to provide the additional accuracy, integrity, and availability necessary for its use by the civilian aviation community. Previ­ously, GPS data were unable to provide naviga­tion capability for use in precision approaches. Through WAAS, precision approaches are con­ceivable for all 5,400 public use airports in the United States without local airport ground sup­port facilities.

WAAS is an integral part of the FAA plan to replace ground-based Navaids entirely with satellite-based navigation capability, thus elimi­nating VORs, VORTACs, ILS, and MLS. (See Chapter 35 for the Next Generation Air Trans­portation System plan.)

National Airports

The FAA no longer is responsible for the two major airports located in and near Washington, D. C., Reagan National and Dulles, since their operation has been assigned to the Washington Metropolitan Airport Authority.