Category AVIATION &ТНЕ ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

m Recently a man asked whether the business of flying ever could be regu­lated by rules and statutes. I doubt it. Not that flying men are lawless. No one realizes better than they the need for discipline. But they have learned discipline through constant contact with two of the oldest statutes in the universe—the iaw of gravity and the law of self-preservation. Ten feet off the ground these two laws supersede all others and there is little hope of their repeal, ff

Walter Hinson, 24 July 1926, Liberty Magazine

The exact timing of the decision by the Post Office to turn over the airmail delivery service to the private sector is lost in the mists of time. Dur­ing the period from 1918 to 1925, however, the Post Office did spend $17 million to operate the airmail service while realizing a return of about one-third that amount. And during the nine years that the Post Office Department carried airmail (1918-1927), 32 pilots—about one out of every six—were killed in the service.

The railroads also made it clear that they were opposed to any long-term government intrusion on their longstanding mail contract subsidies. In 1925, Postmaster Harry S. New, a former Congressman himself, worked with Con­gressman Clyde Kelly (who represented railroad interests) to formulate a legislative bill designed to put the airmail delivery service up for com­petitive bid.

Congress passed the Kelly Act (so-called after the name of the bill’s sponsor) on Febru­ary 2, 1925. The act was appropriately titled “An Act to Encourage Commercial Aviation and to

Authorize the Postmaster General to Contract for the Mail Service.” The statute called for the Postmaster General to seek competitive bids to operate the airmail feeder routes to the transcon­tinental main airmail trunk line between New York and San Francisco. The operation of the transcontinental trunk was to be initially retained by the Post Office service; it made its last flight on that route on September 9, 1927.

Advertisement for bids was published in the middle of 1925, and bids were received from 10 companies. Although eight routes were to be awarded, financial responsibility concerns caused the Post Office to delay assigning some of them until later.

Seven contract airmail (CAM) routes were awarded at the beginning of 1926:

1. CAM 1: Boston-New York, awarded to a group including Juan Trippe, later to found and operate Pan American Airways. Colo­nial Air Transport operated the airmail service.

2. CAM 2: Chicago-St. Louis, awarded to Robertson Aircraft Corp., a forerunner to American Airlines. Robertson hired Charles Lindbergh as chief pilot. (See Figure 12-4.)

3. CAM 3: Chicago-Dalias, awarded to National Air Transport, a forerunner of United Airlines.

4. CAM 4: Salt Lake City-Los Angeles, awarded to Western Air Express, a forerun­ner of TWA.

5. CAM 5: Elko, Nevada-Pasco, Washington, awarded to Varney Air Lines, a forerunner of United Airlines.

6. CAM 6: Detroit-Cleveland, awarded to Ford Air Transport.

7. CAM 7: Detroіt-Chicago, awarded to Ford Air Transport.

Ford was the first to begin service, on February 15, 1926, with the others following

within four months. The last to begin service was Colonial Airways on CAM 1. Subsequent awards that year were:

8. CAM 8: Los Angeles-Seattle, awarded to Pacific Air Transport, a forerunner of United Airlines.

9, CAM 9: Chicago-Minneapolis, awarded to Charles Dickenson. Northwest Airlines began operating the route in 1926.

10. CAM 10: Atlanta-Jacksonville, awarded to Florida Airways Corp, a forerunner of Eastern Air Lines.

11. CAM 11: Cleveland-Pittsburgh, awarded to Clifford Ball, later absorbed by United Airlines.

12. CAM 12: Pueblo, Colorado—Cheyenne, Wyoming, awarded to Western Air Express.

The aircraft available to serve the new air­mail companies were limited and unreliable. The Post Office had largely relied on the World War I British-designed DFI-4, but its Liberty engines were pretty much used up. Varney had to begin airmail service with the underpowered Swal­low biplane, and Western Air Express bought the Douglas M-2, all six of them. Ford had the

first of the Ford Trimotors (see Figures 12-5 and 12-6), producing 14 in 1926. Juan Trippe of Colonial Air Transport, impressed by Fokker’s monoplane design and its absence of wires and struts, ordered the first three Fokker Trimotors produced, but they would not be available until 1927. In 1928, Western Air added Fokkers for its Los Angeles-San Francisco passenger service.

One of the most advanced airplanes in 1926 was the Boeing 40, which had been designed around the Liberty engine. A joint study done by Boeing and Pratt & Whitney showed that a Wasp mounted on the Boeing 40 airframe would be able to carry a payload of 1,200 pounds as compared to 300-400 pounds using the Liberty engine. This was interesting information to have when the Post Office announced in the fall of 1926 that the Chicago-San Francisco airmail route was going up for bid (the eastern leg of the transcontinental route from New York to Chicago was awarded to National Air Transport).

The western route was challenging when viewed from any angle: the Rockies, the weather, the distance, and the fact that night flying was a requirement. Boeing had been flying the interna­tional airmail route between Seattle and Vancou­ver with seaplanes under contract with Canada and the United States since 1919, but that route
was basically flat and over tidal water. Another problem was that the U. S. Navy had dibs on the first 200 Wasps that P&W could produce.

Rentschler’s contacts once again proved fruitful. An agreement was made for Boeing to step ahead of the Navy for delivery of these engines, at the rate of five per month for a total of 25 Wasps. Thus, the Boeing 40 A, with a single Wasp mounted upfront, was bom and the fuselage revised to accommodate two passengers behind the firewall. Based on the results of the joint study, Boeing submitted a bid that was about one-third of that of any of its competitors.

Over protests of bad faith and “low-ball” bidding, Boeing began flying the Chicago-San Francisco route on July 1, 1927, and it made money in the process. This was only possible because of the Wasp, and it put private airmail carriage off to an excellent start.

« I’ve tried to make the men around me feel, as I do, that we embarked as pioneers upon a new science and industry in which our problems are so new and unusual that it behooves no one to dismiss any novel idea with the statement that “it can’t be done!” Our job is to keep everlasting at research and experimentation, to adapt our
laboratories to production as soon as possible, and to let no new improve­ment in flying and flying equipment pass us by. w

William E. Boeing, founder, The Boeing Company, 1929

Orders for the Wasp began to flood in from the commercial side as well as the military. Var­ney Airlines was the first to order the Boeing 40 A with the Wasp engine. The Wasp quickly began to replace the smaller Wright engines in the Trimotor Ford and Fokkers and practically every other large aircraft type. The Wasp was destined to reign supreme over its competition for several years before larger P&W and Wright engines became available. Soon the Boeing 40 В was designed with an enclosed four-place pas­senger compartment, with glass windows on each side, located between the Wasp/Hornet engine and the pilot in his open cockpit behind.

The 40 Bs set a completely new standard of reliability in the air. Proven reliability was an absolute necessity before transporting pas­sengers on any broad scale could be seriously considered. With the Liberty engine, making the long-distance run without an engine failure or forced landing was practically unknown. The Wasps began running 250 hours and more with­out adjustment of any kind or requiring overhaul.

These engines actually ended the long­standing superiority of European engine manu­facture that began before World War I and led to the establishment of American air supremacy for decades to come, well through World War II. They also laid the groundwork for the suc­cessful beginning of the commercial air transport business.

he process of creating an air transportation system had begun as an incidental consequence of privatizing the United States airmail delivery system. While a partial and rudimentary navigation infrastructure was in place, there was very little else on which to base a civil air transportation network. In 1925, it was difficult to imagine air travel ever overtaking the familiar modes of travel by sea or rail. Flying was not only still the province of adventurers, it was prohibitively expensive. About the only thing that would recommend travel by air was the element of speed, but this was more than offset by the dis­comfort of the associated noise, heat, cold, or tur­bulence, as well as the likelihood that mechanical failures would result in unscheduled landings, causing delays or, heaven forbid, even worse.

But aside from the optimistic efforts of the undaunted enthusiasts of aviation, there were national interests to be considered. In Europe subsidized national flag carriers were being formed, Imperial Airways in Britain in 1924, for instance, and there were rumors of Lufthansa in Germany (which did form in 1926). Other Euro­pean countries were forming airlines. There was criticism heard in the United States and recol­lections of how far behind Europe America had been before and during the First World War.

The United States had no civil aviation policy. President Calvin Coolidge, like most everybody else, had never been inside an airplane. But Coolidge was in a position to do something about it—he formed a commission to study what should be done. It was called the Morrow Board.

Coolidge and Dwight Morrow had been classmates at Amherst. Morrow had gone to Yale Law School and was in law practice in New York in 1925 when Coolidge asked him to head up a “blue-ribbon” committee to make a general inquiry into U. S. aviation. Coolidge biographer Robert Sobel characterized Coolidge’s style this way: “Find the right man, tell him what has to be done, then step aside.”1

Having such a man was particularly important since two related committees had preceded this one: (1) the Secretary of War had convened the Lassiter Board in 1923 to try to resolve competing interests of the Army and Navy regarding airpower and how it should be controlled, and (2) the House of Representatives had appointed the Lampert Committee in 1924 to look into allegations of malfeasance by the Chief of Air Service, General Mason Patrick, regarding budget cuts for military aviation and the policy of the Army that placed air units under control
of ground commanders. It was in the Lampert Commission hearing that General Billy Mitchell got in such hot water with his insubordinate statements about military aviation that President Coolidge ordered his court-martial. In short, the state of American aviation was in turmoil.

Now the Morrow Board was formed in September 1925 to look into the future of aviation in both the military and civilian aviation sectors. It was composed of a federal judge, an engineer on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), several former military officers, and the World War I head of the Board of Aircraft Production. Morrow himself knew little about aviation, although he was a member of the Guggenheim Fund Board of Trustees (see below).

In 1938 it was the Big Four and then everybody else. Some of the smaller lines would fade away; others would prosper under the new law. When the Civil Aeronautics Act passed Congress, nota­bles among the small lines were Delta, North­west, Western Air Express, Braniff, National, and Continental. Much would be heard from them in the future. And then there was Pan American.

oeing had upgraded the 707 in 1959 with

the new J-75 engine. The DC-8 was flying. Big jets were flying long distances and setting records, and the public was fascinated. Govern­ments the world over were buying these jets and setting up their own airlines. Flying in jets was a prestigious activity.

The government of France had been eclipsed in the jet design and production market. Its avi­ation representatives took note of something that was not in production and not even on the drawing boards—a medium-range jet that could carry 60 passengers up to 1,200 miles. This was the airplane for the European market and, presciently, was to become the airplane for the deregulated market of the future. This was the Regional Jet.

In response to a government-sponsored competition, Sud Aviation in Toulouse, France came up with a novel idea in aircraft construc­tion. They placed the aircraft’s engines on the side of the fuselage near the tail of the aircraft instead of under the wings. They called this prototype the Caravelle (see Figure 21-1), a name given small sailing ships during the age of explo­ration. Production began, and in 1956 Air France contracted for the first twelve airliners to come off the line.

British European Airways, the government – owned airline, flew many of the same routes on the Continent using turboprops. Given the proven popularity of jets, already evident in the 1950s, Britain realized that it must build its own short – haul aircraft in order to compete. Its entry was the Hawker-Siddeley Trident, which incorporated the Caravelle aft-engine innovation but added a third engine housed within the vertical stabilizer and aft fuselage. The aircraft designers placed the horizontal stabilizer at the top of the vertical stabi­lizer, out of the way of the jet exhaust, an arrange­ment that provided more stability at low airspeeds.

Meanwhile, Boeing was testing the aft – engine concept with an aft-mounted engine attached to its 707 prototype, and it was ponder­ing the viability of such an aircraft in the domes­tic market. Douglas had designed the DC-9, with its aft-mounted engines, in response to a request by United Airlines, but no other carrier expressed interest, and the design was put on hold. The airlines specified an aircraft with two or three engines, for cost effectiveness, that could operate from shorter runways like LaGuardia. Boeing’s engineers were first to conclude that a three – engine airplane with a T-tail was the most likely airplane to succeed, borrowing from the Trident design, which had proven out in Boeing’s tests. They designated the new airplane the Boeing 727 and incorporated the new Pratt & Whitney JT8D turbofan, with up to 17,500 pounds of thrust, as the power plant. Turbofans evolved from turbo­jets as early as 1960, mainly in response to com­plaints about the noise produced by straight jets, both while in taxi and airborne. The JT8D was not only quieter, but it was also more economical to operate than any other engine at the time.

The 727 was an aesthetically pleasing air­plane. (See Figure 21-2.) It was said that build­ing the 727 would have been warranted even if it could not fly. It utilized the same basic fuse­lage as the 707 and incorporated a new flap design that, at slow airspeeds, increased the wing area by 25 percent; thereby greatly reducing

the aircraft stall speed. This reduction in speed enabled the 727 to operate from shorter runways, just as specified by the airlines.

The first production model of the 727 flew late in 1962 and immediately began to surpass its design criteria. It was faster, its fuel consumption was less, and its payload was greater. Short land­ing and takeoff was proven in operation, and its superb handling made it one of the most trusted and respected aircraft flying. Concerns arising from a series of four crashes occurring in 1965 were alleviated when it was determined that they were all caused by pilot error in allowing the air­plane to descend at a rate from which recovery was difficult. These accidents established that the 727, in spite of its easy handling characteristics, had to be flown by the numbers, like most jets. The performance of the 727 would go on to earn it a reputation as the most successful commercial transport aircraft in the history of aviation. By the early 1980s, Boeing had delivered or contracted to deliver almost 2,000 of the very unique airplanes.

After Douglas had placed its DC-9 plans on hold in the late 1950s, the emergence of the short-to-medium range aircraft market caused Douglas to dust off its DC-9 blueprints. In April 1961, Douglas announced that it would begin production of the DC-9. Although Douglas had no orders placed at the time of its announce­ment, within a month Delta disclosed its con­tract to purchase 15 of the new jets. Boeing did not respond to the DC-9 until 1965, the same year the first DC-9 went into service. (See Figure 21-3.) Then Boeing unveiled its plans for the 737. The 737 was not a sleek airplane, having a width equal to the 727 and 707 but not the length—it was shorter even than the DC-9. Lufthansa Airlines was instrumental in the design of the 737 because they were first to order the airplane, insisting that it carry 100 passengers, ten more than the DC-9. The 737 entered service in 1968. (See Figure 21-4.)

Sales of the 737 were initially depressed primarily because the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) took the position that ALPA crews

would not fly the 737 with only two flight crew members; demanding that a flight engineer be included in the cockpit. ALPA was play­ing catch-up from its earlier failure to require three-man crews in the DC-9. This requirement made the 737’s operating costs too high to be competitive, so the airlines largely rejected the airplane. ALPA abandoned its three-crew posi­tion in 1974, partly because of worldwide reces­sion based on the fuel crisis that year, and partly because of the untenable and obvious featherbed­ding aspects of its three-crew position. Airlines then started buying the 737.

For the first time, feeder airlines began to buy the short-to-medium range jets and to bring jet service to the hinterlands of America. Pied­mont, North Central Airlines, and Allegheny Air­lines were able to expand their service, and in the later years of regulation, beginning in the early 1970s, these airlines were able to secure routes to destinations previously unavailable to them. These jets made routes between small airports— like Tri-Cities, Tennessee to Chicago, or to Washington, D. C., or to New York—convenient and profitable. The feeder lines preferred one class service and gave the world a glimpse of the age of deregulation to come. But first, the jumbo jets had to fly.

efore Herbert Hoover was President, he was Secretary of Commerce in the Coolidge Administration. He was called on to testify before the Morrow Board in 1925. The Morrow Board had been created for the purpose of study­ing the state of aviation and recommending to the president an aviation policy for the nation. Avia­tion, as the newest form of commerce joining maritime and land-based transportation, naturally followed some of the paths previously estab­lished by the older forms. It was also recognized that the promotion of aviation was in the national interest, much the same as it had been acknowl­edged that the nation needed the Post Office, a merchant marine, and the railroads.

Secretary Hoover drew an almost complete parallel between the needs of the fledgling avia­tion industry and the government’s policy toward maritime commerce in the United States. He pointed out that government had accepted the responsibility of providing aids to navigation in the nation’s ports and waterways by establishing markers, buoys, and lighthouses, and by provid­ing surveys and geodetic charting. The govern­ment had provided land grants to the railroads in order to open up the West, in the name of the national interest. Roadways, too, were within the realm of government responsibility in part
to facilitate motor commerce. The analogy was complete. Aviation needed and deserved federal assistance and direction if it was to develop in an organized manner. Otherwise, a fragmented and chaotic system of air transportation could be expected.

Included within the analogy was the need for airports to serve the various cities of the country. In the 1920s airmail service was being provided to some cities but not to others, often based on the fact that no landing fields were available to receive the planes. Airports then were truly land­ing “fields,” sometimes referred to as “all-way air­fields” since landings and takeoff could be made in any direction. Runways were the exception. Notwithstanding the favorable national policy toward aviation, there was no authorization for the direct participation of the federal government in the construction of airports. Municipalities, counties, and state governments recognized that their participation in air commerce was going to be dependent, in large part, on their own financial contributions. The Air Commerce Act of 1926 authorized the Commerce Department to survey and rate airports, and by 1929 some 181 airports had been catalogued. Only half of the airports had some kind of “prepared” runway, ranging from an oil-treated surface to cinders and concrete. Major
cities, including Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Milwaukee, Denver, and Boston, had fields acquired and improved with local money. Indeed, prior to World War II, most of the airports of the country were financed, developed, and operated by local or regional government, since no federal airport program had ever existed.

New York’s LaGuardia airport was a local project. It started out in 1929 as North Beach Airport and, when Mayor Fiorello La Guardia began his expansive program of municipal works during the 1930s, including the city’s famous bridges, tunnels, and highways, the airport was included. New York had been a central maritime port for over a century and had developed into a major transatlantic passenger seaport by the 1930s. Its piers, visibly surrounding the island of Manhattan, provided a gateway to the world. They also provided an aviation analogy for the advanced planners of New York.

LaGuardia airport was only eight miles from the center of Manhattan, and Pan American had built its Marine Terminal there. There was a concrete apron for the parking of the new DC-2s and DC-3s, and its runways were a mile long. La Guardia took advantage of a Depression era program known as the Works Progress Admin­istration (WPA—the name was changed to the Works Projects Administration in 1939), which was begun to provide work for the millions of unemployed men during the 1930s. At a time when practically all construction of any kind was stopped by the rigors of the Great Depression, and with commercial aviation just beginning to emerge as a new and viable transportation medium, federal monies expended through the WPA program greatly enhanced the progress of commercial aviation in the 1930s.

The Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 lifted the ban on direct federal contributions for airports. One of the first cities to benefit was Washington, D. C., whose airport, Washington-Hoover Air­port, was described at the time by historian lohn R. M. Wilson: «Bordered on the east by Highway One, with its accompanying high-ten­sion electrical wires, and obstructed by a smokestack on one approach and a smoky dump nearby, the field was a masterpiece of inept siting. Incredibly, the airport was intersected by a busy thoroughfare, Military Road, which had guards posted to flag down traffic during takeoffs and landings. In spite of such hazards, Washington – Hoover had a perfect safety record— for the simple reason that whenever even a slight breeze was blowing, planes refused to land there.1»

By 1941, Washington National Airport had taken the place of Washington-Hoover, hav­ing been literally dredged up out of the swampy ground next to the Potomac. It immediately became the second busiest airport in the country.

Civil airport construction languished, how­ever, largely because of World War II. Dur­ing the war, the federal government had created many airfields for military use under a program known as Development of Landing Areas for National Defense, spending $3.25 billion. After the war, pursuant to the Surplus Property Act of 1944, about half of these bases were turned over to local and state governments. Still, airports of the size and quality for use by growing commer­cial aviation were few, and those few were abys­mal. As reported in Fortune in 1946:2

The half-dozen largest city airports handle millions of people a year. LaGuardia airport with 2,100,000 people, Washington with 757,000, Chicago with 1,300,000, and Los Angeles’ Lockheed Air Terminal with

760,0 give clear indication of the size of the new air traffic. By standards of the huge railroad terminals, such as New York’s Grand

Central, which handles 65 million people a year, a million passengers is not so much. But a million passengers jamming through one small room, such as Chicago’s filthy little air terminal, instantly creates a problem solvable only by a fresh start in new sur­roundings, by new design on functional lines.

Chicago is the worst; its airport is a slum. Chewing gum, orange peel, papers, and cigar butts strew the floor around the stacks of baggage. Porters can’t keep the floor clean if people are standing on it day and night. At almost all hours every tele­phone booth is filled, with people lined up outside; the dingy airport cafe is filled with standees. To rest the thousands there are exactly 28 broken-down seats. One must line up even for the rest rooms. The weary travel­ers sit or even lie on the floor. The drooping grandmothers, the crying babies, the continuous, raucous, unintelligible squawk of the loudspeaker, the constant push and jos­tle of new arrivals and new baggage tangling inextricably with their predecessors, make bus terminals look like luxury.

To say that the airports at San Francisco or Los Angeles are less squalid than Chicago is faint praise, for the difference is so slight that anyone passing hastily through would notice no real improvement. Almost all U. S. airports are utterly barren of things to do. The dirty little lunch counters are always choked with permanent sitters staring at their indi­gestible food; even a good cup of coffee is a thing unknown. The traveler consigned to hours of tedious waiting can only clear a spot on the floor and sit on his baggage and, while oversmoking, drearily contemplate his sins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Я The Air Commerce Act of 1926

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

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

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

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

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

■ Lindbergh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles A. Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. The line would employ flying boats to the

exclusion of other types of aircraft.

2, The line would fly only multiengine planes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary of Airlines’ Condition

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

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

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

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

Endnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

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

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

Foundation

Beginnings

The Industrial Revolution

The Railroads

The Industrial Age and the Rise of Unionism