Category AVIATION &ТНЕ ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

Exploding passenger traffic after World War II and the advance in aircraft technology were only part of the problem confronting airports. Air­craft hijacking began as a means for oppressed citizens from communist regimes to escape to freedom in the West. As long as the hijackings were of communist-controlled airlines and the destination was freedom, the public generally applauded this audacity. But when the hijacking traffic started moving in the other direction, from the United States to Cuba, people began to view hijacking a bit differently. The first such United States to Cuba effrontery occurred in 1961 when a National Airlines airliner was commandeered to Havana, and was followed by more. It was unthinkable. No federal laws adequately covered the activity, so Congress hurriedly passed appro­priate legislation making the hijacking of an aircraft a federal crime. Things then cooled off and it began to look as though the few hijackings from the United States had been an aberration. But in 1968, there were 17 hijacking attempts; in 1969, there were 33 more.

Hijacking commercial airliners soon became a worldwide phenomenon when two Arabs grabbed a TWA flight bound for Tel Aviv. Hijacking was gradually evolving into terrorism; that is, hijacking to accomplish a political pur­pose. Palestinians seized a Pan American 747 in September 1970 and forced it to Cairo, where it was blown up. This kind of terrorism was repeated on several occasions, resulting in destruction of the aircraft amid full-blown television coverage. Hostages were taken; ransoms and the release of imprisoned terrorists were demanded.

The United States initiated a program of air marshals, G-men who rode anonymously aboard selected airliners for the purpose of foil­ing would-be hijackers. Eastern Air Lines began using metal detectors for boarding passengers. Then the infamous D. B. Cooper, a thief with no particular social or religious philosophy, took over a Northwest Airlines 727. He directed the aircraft to a designated landing site where he released the passengers but demanded and got $200,000 and four parachutes. After the aircraft departed, and while airborne over the vast forests of the northwestern United States, he lowered the 727’s unique rear stairwell and disappeared, with his cash, into the night.

But hijackings worldwide were taking on a deadly and tragic caste. In October 1972, an Eastern 727 was hijacked to Havana by wanted murderers, and in November, an escaped convict and two accomplices seized a Southern Airways DC-9 and proceeded to take the airplane and crew on an extended 29 hour odyssey, making eight landings. The airplane and crew finally wound up safely in Havana, even after agents in Miami shot out the tires during takeoff. The FAA responded by ordering the installation of metal detectors at all gates at airports serving certificated carriers.4 In December 1972 the FAA changed the passenger airline business forever by ordering the airlines to carry out electronic screening of all boarding passengers, as well as the inspection of carry-on luggage.

In the years since the first electronic screen­ing began, scrutiny of airline passengers has steadily intensified. The list of prohibited carry – on items has persistently lengthened. Surveil­lance methods and sources have increased. Many more security personnel have been employed. Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, security procedures have been greatly amplified, as well as modified to address the threat of international terrorism. Responsibility for airport security has been removed from the FAA and given to the new Transportation Secu­rity Administration (TSA). Please see Chapter 35 for a more thorough discussion of the TSA.

his is a story that begins with man’s earli­est reported technological accomplishment, the invention of the wheel, and continues with an ever-increasing intensity. A curve plotted on one axis as time and on the other as the rate of technological advance will depict a flat to gradu­ally rising line, becoming at a point a rapidly rising line, disclosing a recent very high rate of technological accomplishment. (See Figure 1-1.) Between 1790 and 1870, for example, there were just over 40,000 patents granted in the United States for that entire 80-year period. During the 30 years between 1870 and 1900, the Patent Office granted over 400,000 patents, a 10-fold increase in slightly more than one third of the time. In 1870, there was nothing in America that could be called a steel industry; but by 1900, over 10 million tons of steel were being produced annually, more than the rest of the world com­bined. As men struggled to fly, the rate of tech­nological innovation was beginning to move up, but it had been a long time coming.

All modern-day accomplishments are based, to one degree or another, on the efforts and accomplishments of those who went before. The ancient Phoenicians sailed the confines of the Mediterranean Sea by reference to land, and also by reference to the sun and stars. The length of
the Mediterranean, its east and west limits, were known to them as Asu (east) and Ereb (west), the word roots that form the names of Asia and Europe in use today. Ocean travel was coast­wise. Improvements were made to the shapes of sails and hulls used in early maritime commerce. Insurance and accounting came into vogue in the maritime trading centers around the Mediterra­nean, in the city-states such as Venice. Gunpow­der arrived by the 9th century and, by the late 12th century, the magnetic compass was coming into common use on land and sea.

But the rising curve of progress really only begins with the rise of Western Civilization and the Rule of Law. Circumstances conducive to invention and innovation depend on many fac­tors, including incentive to innovate—like the profit motive—and protection for the results of invention, like patent law. These and other rel­evant factors depend on a stable, progressive, and lawful society, and a strong government. Magna Carta (The Great Charter), in 1215, establishing for the first time limitations on the arbitrary pow­ers of the King of England, is widely regarded as the cornerstone of personal liberty. Its principles have evolved into broad constitutional concepts embraced today. In 1420 began a period of prog­ress and enlightenment known as the Renaissance

(rebirth), a time of advances in astronomy, anatomy, engineering, physics, and art. Great leaps of mind made by the luminaries of that day included the idea that man might actually fly—or so believed Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). His sketches depicting wings to support manned flight disclose that he understood the same basic airfoil concept used today. His ideas on the subject were lost for a period of 300 years before rediscovery.

«When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return, w

Curtiss remained busy. His sojourns in California during 1910 convinced him of the benefits of the winter climate there compared to the snow of Hammondsport and frozen Lake Keuka in New York. Late that year he leased North Island in San Diego Bay and offered free pilot training to both the Army and the Navy, receiving his first military students early the next year. In Novem­ber 1910, a pilot employed by Curtiss, Eugene Ely, was the first to take off an airplane from a Navy vessel, the USS Birmingham, anchored at Hampton Roads, Virginia. (See Figure 8-8.) Two months later in January 1911, Ely became the first to land an airplane back aboard a vessel, the USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay, utilizing in both cases specially constructed wooden platforms on the ships, and in both cases without the benefit of any wind over the decks of the anchored ships. (See Figure 8-9.)

He set up shop facilities for conducting experimentation with floats in order to develop a successful seaplane, at that time called a

hydroplane. Although he had experimented with floats on the June Bug in 1908, and again in May and June 1910 with a canoe fitted centrally beneath one of his D2 machines, he had not been successful in getting an airplane off the water. At North Island, tests showed that significantly greater engine power was required to permit a takeoff from water as compared to land, so vari­ous hull designs were tested.

A breakthrough known as a “stepped” con­figuration essentially solved the problem of the water takeoff. The “stepped” hull design

incorporated a recessed aft section, so that the bottom of the aft section of the hull was higher than the forward portion of the hull. As speed increased, the aft section of the hull came out of the water first, which greatly reduced drag and produced a planing effect of the hull on water that later came to be known as “being on the step.” These original designs were modified and improved, spray patterns were controlled, and the improved hulls ultimately allowed take off from the water with close to the same horse­power as that required from land. By 1912, the Curtiss-designed aircraft hull had become state – of-the-art for the world. Further improvements were made as engines were mounted on the upper frame of the airplane, and as airframes were redesigned to account for pitch changes caused by these changes in the center of thrust. The Curtiss flying boats proved highly popular and sales were made to many foreign countries all over the world.6 (See Figure 8-10.)

In February 1911, he built his first tractor seaplane, with the engine and propeller at the front of the airplane (to avoid damaging water spray to the propeller) and the elevators at the rear. At the request of the Navy, he person­ally flew this craft out to the USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Diego harbor, where the airplane was winched aboard and then redeployed to the

water, completing the demonstration for what would become a common practice for the use of airplanes for scouting missions from warships. On May 8, 1911, the Navy ordered two Curtiss hydroplanes.

By the end of 1927, the government had extended the lighted portion of the airway system from New York to Salt Lake City on the transcontinental route, and on portions of feeder and parallel segments, such as Los Angeles to Las Vegas, New York to Atlanta, Chicago to Dallas, and between Los Angeles and San Francisco. That year there were 4,121 miles of lighted airways operated by the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce. By 1933, there were 1,500 beacons in place, extending the lighted airway systems for a length of 18,000 miles. While the lighted airway was of significant aid in navigation, it had serious limitations in the context of an all-weather air carrier system. It was still a visual navigation system, dependent on reasonably good weather in order to operate effectively.

The Bureau of Standards in the Department of Commerce began, in 1926, to work with radio as a means of communication and navigation. As government involvement in aviation began to kick in as a result of the Air Commerce Act, money and effort were applied to solve problems and to attempt to eliminate limitations on the commercial development of air commerce. In 1926, for instance, there was no two-way voice communication possible with aircraft in flight. This amounted to a serious limitation in safety, including a lack of pilot awareness of developing weather. By 1927, the first radio transmitter was established at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, allowing communication with aircraft in a 150-mile radius.

In 1928, the Bureau of Standards developed a new radio beacon system of navigation, the first non-visual navigation system in the world. The Aeronautics Branch, which had authority over the lighted airway system, took over the installation and control of the new radio navigation system in 1929. The system was known as the “four-course radio range,” and it would provide the first step in allowing a true all-weather air carrier system to begin to develop. It would remain the standard navigation system in use until World War П.

The four-course radio range utilized low frequency radio waves (190 to 535 kHz radio band) transmitted from powerful 1,500-watt beacons spaced 200 miles apart on the airway. The beacons transmitted two Morse code signals, the letter “A” and the letter “N.” In Morse code, these signals are opposite, “dot-dash” for A, and “dash-dot” for N. When the aircraft was centered “on the beam,” these signals merged into a steady, monotonous tone. If the aircraft ventured to one side of the airway, the signal heard was either the Morse A or N, depending on the aircraft’s position from the beacon. (See Figure 13-3.)

Each beacon defined four airways, thus the name “four-course radio range,” and the beacon’s identification was broadcast in Morse code twice each minute. The so-called beam width was 3 degrees, so that at the halfway point of 100 miles between beacons, the on-course deviation was about +/-2.6 miles. Station passage was

marked by a “cone of silence,” at which point the aural tone would disappear as the aircraft passed overhead. Distance from the station was later provided by marker beacons placed along the airway at intervals of 20 miles or so.

By today’s standards, the four-course radio range was primitive. Low frequency radio was subject to electrical static and other weather aberrations and distortions, but it constituted a quantum leap forward over the visual, lighted beacon system in use at the time. Pilots became very adept at flying the four-course system, and as the airlines began establishing schedules on their new routes. All-weather navigation allowed adherence to schedules that theretofore would have been impossible.

The CAB was established as an independent board of five individuals who reported directly to the president and whose function was primar­ily to exercise control over air carrier economic regulation, such as rates, routes, and mergers. The CAB was also given the responsibility to investigate aircraft accidents and for safety rule­making. It was specifically charged with “the promotion, encouragement, and development of civil aeronautics.”

Ш The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA)

The CAA was created as an agency, headed by an administrator, which was placed back within the Department of Commerce. Responsibility for all non-military air traffic control, safety programs, and airway development was now assumed by the CAA. Compliance with Civil Air Regulations became mandatory. Training centers were established to educate and standardize train­ing for air traffic controllers and others affected by safety regulations. Coordination of all control­lers followed, with towers and en route centers falling under the CAA umbrella.

When the Department of Transportation Act cre­ated the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the function of the government in promoting, regulating, and enforcing aviation safety stan­dards finally found a permanent home. A quick review of the history of the administration of aviation safety shows the torturous path that it had taken.

The Air Commerce Act of 1926 first autho­rized safety regulation, the administration of which was placed within the Department of Commerce. The Aeronautics Branch was created as an agency in the Department of Commerce and became the first government agency to con­cern itself with aviation safety. This agency was renamed the Bureau of Air Commerce in 1934. Under the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 (as amended in 1940), these functions were trans­ferred to the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and remained within the Department of Commerce.

The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 signifi­cantly reallocated existing authority in avia­tion regulatory matters. The CAA was renamed the Federal Aviation Agency, removed from the Department of Commerce, and organized as an independent agency that reported only to Congress and to the president. The Federal Aviation Agency was given the responsibility previously exercised by the CAB for propos­ing air safety legislation (statutory) and for rule making, designated under the CAB as Civil Aeronautic Rules (CARs), and now known as the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs). All air safety research and development authority was consolidated within the Agency, including that previously carried out by the National Advi­sory Committee for Aeronautics, the Airways Modernization Board, and the Air Coordinating Committee. The procedural responsibility in air­man certificate actions was also transferred from the CAB to the Federal Aviation Agency. Under the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, the CAB retained its responsibility for the investigation of aircraft accidents as well as its economic regu­lation of the airlines, and it became an appeals review board for certificate action taken by the Federal Aviation Agency.

Under the provisions of the Department of Transportation Act, responsibility for aviation safety, and virtually all logical ramifications of safety issues, were placed within the authority of the Federal Aviation Administration. Its basic mission is defined by its legislative mandate, particularly the Federal Aviation Act of 1958. In 1984, Congress authorized commercial space launches by the private (nongovernmental) sec­tor for the first time under the Commercial Space Launch Act. Regulatory authority was initially placed within the Department of Transportation in the Office of Commercial Space Transporta­tion (AST), but in 1995 this function was moved over to the FAA under the same name, Office of Space Transportation (AST). This office con­ducts the only space-related function within the FAA. FAA/AST regulates the commercial space transportation industry to ensure compliance with international obligations of the United States and to enhance safety and national security. It also licenses commercial space launches of both orbital and suborbital rockets and nonfederal launch sites, or spaceports.

The scope of the functions assigned to the FAA are pervasive. While safety has always been the mainstay of the FAA mandate, ongo­ing developments in aviation have caused new emphasis to be placed on related but separate concerns, such as security,1 the environment, airport funding, international relations, and com­mercial space activities.

The functions of the FAA could logically be examined from several different perspec­tives, but for our purposes the following break­out of FAA responsibility should be the most instructive.

The operation of airports changed in many other ways. The physical size of new airports serving modern jet airline traffic, the noise consider­ations inherent in airport operations, the large facilities necessary to accommodate the millions of passengers passing through the airports, and the newfound safety concerns resulting from the criminal and social developments of the 1960s called for a new and aggressive national airport policy.

Under the Federal Airport Act of 1946, the Federal-Aid Airport Program (FAAP) had been the first peacetime program of financial aid aimed exclusively at promoting development of the nation’s civil airports. It endured for 24 years, but the growing demands of modern commercial aviation rendered that program obsolete.

In 1970, Congress passed the Airport and Airway Development Act in order to address the obvious shortcomings of the nation’s airports and the airway system. The policy statement for this law recognized the inadequacy of the nation’s airport and airway system, and commit­ted the government to its substantial expansion and improvement in order to meet the demands of interstate commerce, the national defense, and the postal service. Congress thereby created the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, which receives revenues from excise taxes paid by users of the National Air Space. Excise taxes are placed on domestic airline passenger tickets, domestic air­line flight segments, international arrivals and departures, air cargo waybills, and aviation fuels used by general aviation. See Table 23-1.

In 1982, after deregulation, Congress amended the existing statute with the Airport and Airway Development Act of 1982, reestablish­ing the FAA’s airport grants program (which had been inactive since 1981) and renaming the Trust Fund program the Airport Improvement Program (AIP). The Trust Fund was originally admin­istered by the CAA in 1946, and sequentially thereafter by the Federal Aviation Agency and then the Federal Aviation Administration.

This Act also amended the Federal Aviation Act of 1958 by requiring, for the first time, that operators of airports serving certificated air car­riers secure “Airport Operating Certificates” by application to the FAA, demonstrating the abil­ity to conduct safe and properly equipped airport operations. These requirements are set forth in Part 139 of the Federal Aviation Regulations.

Endnotes

1. Wilson, John R. M., Turbulence Aloft, 34-35.

2. Fortune magazine, August 1946, 78.

3. Denver International Airport opened in 1995.

4. FAR Part 107, effective March 18, 1972.

That enlightened period was followed by the era of European exploration and discovery,

of long distance open water navigation, and the opening of extended trade routes still in use today, along with a commercial appreciation of the meaning of time and distance. Latitudi­nal position, or north-south location, had for some time been capable of being established by reference to the celestial bodies, using instru­ments from early times like the gnomon or the Arabian kamal, and later the astrolabe, the cross­staff and, in 1731, the sextant. While a laborious methodology using the sextant could approxi­mate longitude after 1731, the lack of a defini­tive longitudinal reference had prevented from time immemorial the accurate determining of positions of longitude, which resulted in costly navigation errors, loss of life and property, and commercial uncertainty.

In 1714, British Parliament offered a prize of 20 thousand pounds sterling for a reliable method of determining longitude on a ship at sea.

The best minds in Europe, including astronomers and physicists, worked on the project for 50 years without success. John Harrison, a carpenter and clockmaker with little formal education, rea­soned that if a ship’s local time at sea could be compared to the time at the port of origin, the calculation could readily be made to find the ship’s longitudinal location. Local time could be accurately calculated at any point on earth by ref­erence to astronomical observation and, although accurate pendulum clocks existed at the time, there were no portable clocks. Due to the water’s motion, pendulum clocks would not work at sea.

Harrison produced a series of timepieces beginning in the early 1730s that produced increasingly accurate results, ultimately settling on a design that resembled a very large pocket watch. By 1762, a sea trial of his clock on a voy­age from London to Jamica showed it to be only 5.1 seconds slow. A second trial at sea in 1764 proved the clock’s error to be three times better than required to win the prize. Yet, the prize was not awarded.

The body set up by the royal government to judge the longitude prize, known as the Board of Longitude, consisted of astronomers, mathemati­cians, admirals, and a variety of other leading lights, who collectively could not bring them­selves to believe that a mere carpenter could pos­sibly have solved the longitude problem that had stumped civilization all for all time. The dispute was finally presented to Parliament and to King George III, the latter of whom said, “. . . these people have been cruelly wronged. . . , and By God, Harrison, I will see you righted!” But it was not until 1773 that an Act of Parliament finally awarded the full prize and the recognition for having solved the longitude problem to John Harrison.

The missing universal frame of reference, the Prime Meridian, was officially established in 1884 at Greenwich, England, at which Universal time is now found.

In transportation, while marginal improve­ments were seen in matters nautical, no significant advance had been otherwise made since the dawn of time. Motive power for land transport was pro­vided either by animals or by men themselves. George Washington, for instance, in 1776, was unable to travel from Philadelphia to New York City any faster than Julius Caesar could cover the equivalent distance from Rome to Pompeii. In the middle of the 18th century, the problem was the lack of motive power.

We will begin the study of aviation, and the role of government, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The fruits of this period in world history would, for the first time, drastically alter essentially every aspect of human existence, and would, within the space of 54 years in the 20th century, accomplish a journey from the bicycle age to the space age.

he City of London, although of ancient Roman origin (Londinium), had little to dis­tinguish it from the other potential candidates of Europe and the Middle East (Paris, Venice, Athens, Alexandria) for the honor of becom­ing the jumping-off place for the economic and military conquest of the world. One might have thought, for example, that such a place might more logically be somewhere in the Cradle of Civilization—the Middle East—or at least the Mediterranean, where for centuries commerce had steadily proceeded as invaders and traders crisscrossed the area bartering food, raw materi­als, and spices. Those people developed new and better sailing ships and means of propulsion (such as the triangular sail as an improvement on the square rigger), and they had a leg up when it came to understanding and practicing the art of politics, the use of centralized power, the formulation of ideas, and the development of institutions through centuries of inheritance. The earliest cities, governments, law codes, and alphabets were of Middle Eastern origin, as were the earliest forms of religion—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

The roots of the Industrial Revolution, how­ever, can be found in English inventiveness. In 1750, most people in the world lived in relative self-sufficiency, filling their needs from the sea
and through the husbandry of their own or oth­ers’ land. People produced not only their food, but also their clothes, fuel, candles, and even fur­niture. Items that could not be produced locally, such as spices, tea, and precious stones, could be purchased in limited quantity from entrepreneur­ial efforts. The issue of labor was rather simple: one essentially did for oneself.

But there was a difference between England and the rest of Europe. England had developed a type of middle class, a mercantile base that dealt in the leather and wool trades, shipping, and bank­ing. Most of Europe was still stuck in the vestiges of the feudal system of the Middle Ages where one’s future was defined by one’s status at birth. In England, trade had become a leveler of class dis­tinction to some degree, where the opportunity to engage in free market exchange brought the oppor­tunity for financial gain. Financial success meant escape from dependency on the upper classes and service to those with wealth and property. A lack of dependency brought with it not only self-sufficiency, but also freedom from the servile bondage of a class-bound society. It brought hope to the common man, and it invigorated him.

Production of woolen goods was revolution­ized by inventions, like the flying shuttle in 1733 by John Kay, and the spinning jenny in 1764 by

James Hargreaves. These and other inventions led to machinery that provided a mechanized means of production whose places of operation came to be known as factories. Factories required people to operate the machines, men and women who could offer their labor in return for wages. In a society that was primarily agrarian, employ­ment opportunities were not widespread. But among the descendents of feudal peasantry, the opportunity to work for a wage, and thus gain a measure of independence, was a step up.

The implementation of the factory system brought with it a significant change in the organi­zation of work. While the production of goods had always been an individual endeavor, requiring the application of some skill in the craft, the factory system introduced a repetitive, routine, and boring set of hand-eye coordination that required, at the most, minimal skill. Over time, workers became more restive, dissatisfied, and unconnected.

Perhaps the most seminal of all develop­ments during this time was the 1769 appearance of the reliable steam engine by Scottish inventor, James Watt. This invention would institution­alize the factory system, both in terms of the development of the labor movement and in terms of the efficient production of goods. It would change the course of the maritime trade, begin­ning with the installation of a steam engine on a barge to provide motive power, the forerunner of the steamship. Not long after, the steam engine would inaugurate an entirely new mode of trans­portation on land when installed on a carriage, the precursor of the locomotive.

The Industrial Revolution set the stage for the modem age to come. Figure 2-1 lists important events in the Industrial and Technological Revo­lution. It provided the impetus for the creation of the modern corporation as a legal entity, which developed as the vehicle by which to raise the large sums of money that were required to engage in the business opportunities that were gener­ated by the Industrial Revolution. It provided the means necessary to commence the first land mass transportation system, the railroads. As the relationship was being established between the railroads and labor, and between both of them with government, the paradigm for the airlines in these same areas was being set. Procedures among the various maritime countries of the world, defining the relative rights and obliga­tions of nations engaged in international shipping, would similarly be made applicable to the airlines.

The Industrial Revolution caused a new involvement by government in the affairs of busi­ness, and spawned an era of regulation and leg­islation. It gave rise to the labor movement and cast the die for early labor-management strife. It created a new demand for manufactured goods, ranging from steel for use in the construction of railroad tracks, locomotives, and cars to cloth for denims for their workers, a consumerism that continues unabated today. It fueled an explosion of new industries, and new companies within each industry to compete under primitive free enter­prise, or laissez-faire principles. And it produced a dependent worker class whose members, because of industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and specialization, were no longer self-sufficient.

An understanding of the history and experi­ence of the railroads is important to our purpose for at least four reasons:

1. As the first modern form of national trans­portation, the railroads set the model in many ways for the succeeding modes of transport, particularly air transportation.

2. The experience of the railroads defined the relationship between carriers and the government, particularly in respect to the concept of the public interest.

3. The experience of the railroads defined the relationship between carriers and the public, the shippers, and passengers.

4. The railroad experience saw the beginning of a cohesive labor movement that was inherited by the airlines and that has been central to the airlines’ experience in the 20th century.

We will review each of these developments in more detail in the next two chapters.

FIGURE 2-1 Important events in industrial and technological development.

Meanwhile, the Wright-Curtiss litigation dragged on. In February 1913, the same judge who had rendered the first judgment in favor of the Wright brothers in 1910 now issued a second opinion in which he specifically found that the Wrights’ discovery of the use of a combination of rudder and wing deflection to maintain lateral control was the breakthrough that was patent­able. The court then held that the use of ailerons was the functional equivalent of wing warping, thus the use of ailerons fell within the orb of the Wright patent.7 But it was too late for Wilbur Wright. He died on May 30, 1912 at the age of 45 because, many said, of the stresses of the pat­ent litigation.

Curtiss, however, was not retreating; he was regrouping. To his side came none other than the automobile magnate Henry Ford. Ford had recently won a protracted patent battle with one George Seldon, who had claimed a prior patent right to Ford’s lightweight “road engine,” which was central to Ford’s ideas for mass production of automobiles. Ford’s patent attorney was W. Benton Crisp, and Ford volun­teered Crisp’s services to Glenn Curtiss. Under attorney Crisp’s guidance, a new strategy for defeating the Wright patent was initiated. The appellate decision that enjoined Curtiss’ use of ailerons as being in violation of the Wright patent had cited only the simultaneous use of ailerons in opposite directions, which provided the lift differential for the two wings, caus­ing the banking effect used in a coordinated turn. Crisp suggested that the Curtiss aircraft be rigged so that the ailerons would be used singly, not simultaneously. This use of ailerons had not been enjoined by the court since it had not been adjudicated. It was, therefore, necessary for Orville to bring another lawsuit against Curtiss. Thus, the patent litigation rolled on in a seem­ingly endless procession of trials and appeals as the wheels of justice ground slowly on, and exceedingly fine.

In the next chapter we will see why and how this enduring legal contest was to be surprisingly resolved for the good of the country and for avia­tion itself.

Lindbergh was not to be the only aviation celebrity of the late 1920s. Building on the women pioneers before her,5 Amelia Earhart was to emerge shortly after the Lindbergh flight as the foremost female aviator up to that time and, arguably, even to the present day. (See Figure 13-4.) She certainly captured the public imagination in much the same way that Lindbergh had, and thereby contributed to the enthusiasm that helped to create the airlines.

When Earhart soloed in 1922 at a small field in south Los Angeles, California, there were fewer than 100 female pilots in the United States. Her flight instructor, Neta Snook, was one of those women. The right to vote had been achieved by women only three years before, in 1919. Earhart purchased a yellow Kinner “Airster” prototype for $2,000 and began making a visible impression in the area, being featured in the Los Angeles Examiner declaring that she intended to fly across the continent. She immediately set a new women’s altitude record (of 14,000 feet) and was advertised as one of only two female pilots in an air meet at the Glendale airport. She was awarded a flying certification in May 1923 from the Federation

Aeronautique Internationale, although flying licenses were not required, nor even issued, by the U. S. government. The certification was necessary in order to have official recognition for any record-breaking or record-setting achievements.

In 1924, Earhart moved with her mother to Boston, Massachusetts, arriving there by a “motorcar” which she drove all the way from California by way of Banff, Canada. This was a daring adventure at the time, as the U. S. Army had only performed the first sustained cross-country convoy in 1919. In Boston, her flying activities once again prompted curiosity from local interests, including The Boston Globe, in which she was featured in an interview in June 1927, shortly after the Lindbergh flight. She was billed as “one of the best women pilots in the United States” and began to be mentioned increasingly in the local press. Earhart bore a remarkable resemblance to Charles Lindbergh, and some say that was the main reason for the event that set her career skyward. She was to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean.

«You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky. w

Amelia Earhart

We have already seen what excitement Lindbergh’s spectacular solo transatlantic flight had caused in 1927. By 1928, women in both Europe and America were making plans to be the first woman to make the crossing, but with a difference—they planned to have the fly­ing actually performed by male pilots. (See Box 13-1.)

Amelia Earhart had no such plans. The flight that was to make her initially famous was entirely planned and paid for by others. She had nothing to do with the selection of pilots, the selection of aircraft, or with flight planning. She was, in effect, chosen as a passenger. At the time, she was making a living as a social worker with immigrants in Boston.

The adventure began in early 1928 when another female patron, the wife of a wealthy Londoner, Frederick E. Guest (she was formerly Amy Phipps of Pittsburgh), purchased a Fokker Trimotor from Commander Richard E. Byrd with plans to hire a pilot to fly her to England. Mrs. Guest was soon dissuaded from this venture by her family, but she stuck with the plan for the trip to be made by “an American girl with the right image,”6 and a committee was formed to find her replacement.

On the committee was George Palmer Putnam, a New York publisher and writer. He had, in fact, published Lindbergh’s We, the firsthand account of the first solo transatlantic crossing, and was in the process of publishing Richard E. Byrd’s chronicle of his flying and exploring adventures in the book, Skyward. He heard of Amelia Earhart, then residing in Boston, and invited her to New York for an interview. It went well, and the agreement was sealed in April 1928.

Earhart would be a passenger on the Friendship, a Fokker F-7 Trimotor fitted with floats that had been already scheduled for a transatlantic attempt in June. The crew consisted of a mechanic, Bill Gordon, and the pilot, Lou Stultz, the latter of whom was proficient in multiengine aircraft, float plane flying, and instrument flying. Amelia Earhart had none of these qualifications nor, for that matter, did many male aviators. Nevertheless, she was billed as the “Commander” of the flight, which left Newfoundland on June 17, 1928 and arrived in New South Wales, England the next day after a flight of 20 hours and 49 minutes.

Gordon and Stultz were soon forgotten, but the public embraced Amelia much as they had Lindbergh. This was a matter of some embarrassment to Earhart, who felt that she had done nothing to deserve such adulation and that the credit should go to the crew, and she had the courage to say so. But the public clamor continued. She received congratulations from many government quarters, including President Coolidge, and under the tutelage of George Putnam, she embarked on a lecture circuit during 1928 and 1929 that gave her worldwide recognition. She thereby became acquainted with aviation luminaries of the time like Admiral Byrd and Colonel Lindbergh. Because of the physical resemblance to Lindbergh and the Atlantic transit similarity, she soon garnered the moniker “Lady Lindy.”

After her return from Europe in 1928, Earhart began to earn the celebrity that had been handed to her by fate. She crossed the continent solo from New York to Los Angeles in September 1928. She was swamped with offers to endorse products in advertising media. She began writing articles for national magazines, including Cosmopolitan and McCall’s, and she was hired by Transcontinental Air Transport (the Lindbergh Line) as Assistant to the General Traffic Manager. She acquired a Lockheed Vega and began entering air races around the country and set several speed records.

In 1929, she was largely responsible for inaugurating the Women’s Air Derby, a grueling nine-day race from Santa Monica, California to Cleveland, Ohio, dubbed by Will Rogers as “the Powder Puff Derby,” a name that has remained with the event. The race was limited to women who had been licensed and who had logged at least 100 hours of solo time. It was estimated at the time that only 30 women could qualify for the event. Twenty fliers started the race, 15 finished, and there was one fatality. Earhart finished third.

Earhart improved her flying proficiency, particularly in instrument qualification. With her publicist (and now husband) George Putnam, she planned and advertised her intention of becoming the first woman to solo the Atlantic. On May 19, 1932, AE (as she had begun to sign her name) left Harbor Grace, Newfoundland for Paris. Mechanical difficulties en route, including a leaking reserve fuel line, an inoperative altimeter, and a broken weld on an engine manifold, caused her to alter course for Ireland. Fifteen hours and eighteen minutes after leaving Harbor Grace, AE landed the Vega in a sloping field outside of Londonderry. Her acclaim rose higher and higher, and she had earned it.

Amelia Earhart was destined for even bigger accomplishments, and for tragedy, as the decade of the 1930s unfolded. We will jump ahead in our chronology of the development of aviation to briefly consider the rest of her story. So far, Earhart had only tried to duplicate what men had done. She had set no significant records for the first time in aviation on a genderless basis. But on January 11, 1935, she left Wheeler Field in Hawaii and successfully soloed her new Vega across 2,400 miles of Pacific Ocean to Oakland, California. No person, man or woman, had ever done that before. The Vega performed flawlessly and required only eighteen hours and fifteen minutes en route. She followed this up with other aviation firsts, a nonstop flight from Burbank, California to Mexico City on April 20, 1935, and from there she flew nonstop across the Gulf of

Mexico and on to Newark, N. J., in 14 hours and 19 minutes on May 8 that year.

In June 1935, AE took on a new role as visiting aeronautics advisor at Purdue University, which had begun an ambitious plan to develop one of the nation’s first academic aviation curricula. As it turned out, this assignment would provide Earhart with the airplane with which she would make her final mark—her unsuccessful attempts to circumnavigate the globe. The Lockheed Electra 10E was purchased by Purdue to be used for research purposes in connection with AE’s duties, but soon after taking possession of the Electra in July 1936, she flew it in the 1936 Bendix air race from New York to Los Angeles. Shortly thereafter, the airplane was fitted for long-distance flight and the latest radio navigation equipment.

Earhart made two attempts to fly around the world in the Electra, both on a flight-planned route close to the equator of over 29,000 miles.7 In both attempts she carried navigator Fred Noonan, who had flown the Pacific extensively with Pan American. The first attempt was planned from east to west, beginning in Oakland with the initial stop in Hawaii, and then on to tiny Howland Island. This effort was abandoned when Earhart ground looped the Electra on take off from Hawaii on March 19, 1937, with serious damage to the airplane. The plane was shipped back to the Lockheed plant in California where it was repaired.

For her next attempt, AE decided to reverse course and fly the route from Oakland to Miami, thence to South America, and on to Africa and points east. The Pacific itinerary was to be the last part of the flight, but it still included Howland Island, which is truly a relative speck of land in the vast Pacific Ocean. By late June 1937, the route had been successfully flown all the way to Lae, New Guinea, a distance of 22,000 miles. On July 2, Earhart and Noonan departed New Guinea for the long over-water flight to Howland Island. In spite of all precautions, including the Coast Guard vessel Itasca standing off Howland to broadcast homing signals and to plot her position, the Electra never made landfall at Howland. Although she was heard on several occasions attempting to make contact with Itasca, her location was never established, and no provable trace of her, Noonan, or the Electra has ever been found.8

While Amelia Earhart had little direct effect on the establishment of commercial aviation in the United States, her efforts to overcome and transcend the boundaries encountered by the aviation pioneers of the 1920s and 1930s engendered public admiration and a greater acceptance of the new industry of flight. She became a model for both male and female aviators and, like many of them, her time was too short.