Tomorrow in Aviation

...The real future of aviation lies in its two transportation markets, and the intelligence and ultimate earning power of the industry can be measured largely in terms of the energy and common sense with which aviation executives will attack first the business of air express and, secondly, the slow and natural increase in passenger traffic...

...Such radical improvements in design as those embodied in the winner of the recent Guggenheim safety contest will greatly reduce the number of accidents due to pilot errors...

...In its two transportation markets, freight and passengers, aviation has but one thing to sell-that commodity known as capacity "revenue ship hours...

...In 1928, less than $.16 out of every dollar received by the American railroads came from passengers...

...Only in the development of air mail-which was distinctly a promotion of the government, and an indirect subsidy-can one find a trace of the common sense which railroad and steamship experience ought to have furnished...

...It would seem that Lindbergh's flight to Paris brought to life the magic thought that at last man had wings- that men could now move swiftly through space with the accuracy of crow flight...

...This will be represented by the peaceful groundling and also by the schedule air transport lines who must think first, last and always of the safety of their passengers or cargoes...

...But as conditions are gradually shaping themselves, it appears that the three markets stand in exactly the reverse of the order given above...

...Yet the railroads have been promoting passenger traffic for seventy years, and in recent times have had no fear complex to contend with...

...First, the sale of planes, and of instruction in piloting them, to individuals...

...It stands to reason that passenger rates cannot be profitably lowered as long as they must bear the sole burden of administration overhead, interest on terminal investment, and maintenance of airways and ground personnel...

...If you examine the promotion material put out by the large aviation companies, the schedule services they have laid out, and the public statements of their leading executives, you will find only the most casual reference to air freight, and that the whole effort has been directed at persuading passengers to take to the air...

...But in these days, when freight-carrying costs, including the write-off of equipment, can be brought well below $.05 per pound per 100 miles, there is no reason, save inertia or lack of foresight, why the aviation industry cannot develop an emergency express market covering the major portion of its fixed expenses and allowing lower and yet profitable passenger rates...

...Air travel is in three dimensions...

...To understand this difficulty thoroughly, one must imagine the viewpoint of railroads if automobiles could travel across country, like tanks, so that every locomotive engineer might expect automobiles and trucks to cross his tracks at any and every point of the line without warning...

...It is not unnatural that thousands of disappointed stockholders, as well as the normally curious public, should be asking whether, after all, aviation has any real future...

...Up to now, aviation has been going at its basic problems upside down, and in full defiance of allied transportation experience...

...The increased use of radio beacons, of ground "lead-in" cables, and of special instruments in the planes themselves, gives promise of gradually solving the fog danger...

...Its danger increases in exact proportion to the number of free-lance planes cavorting through space over any given ground area...

...More than $.84 came from freight and express...

...If the railroads were to attempt, as aviation has been attempting for two years, to draw their chief revenue from passengers, the mileage rates would be so high that only millionaires could travel...

...Even the highest grade aviation stocks suffered amazing set-backs during the fall market debacle...

...But it cannot expand indefinitely or in anything like the proportion of private motoring...

...Aviation's third market-the sale of private planes and flight instruction-involves many factors seldom discussed...

...As now organized aviation has three main markets...

...For the rest, successful operations records are the best of all forms of promotion effort, and here again, a large increase in schedule air freight operations would go far to familiarize the public with air activity...

...There has been a great deal of guesswork among the public as to the relative importance of these three markets, and no end of confusion within the industry itself...

...These advances will go far to establish public confidence in the inherent safety of air operations...

...Nor have they since shown any distinct tendency toward firm recovery...

...Undoubtedly, private flying can expand very largely from its present restricted use without creating a public menace...

...This new type of plane can land in very small areas, even when they are surrounded by relatively high obstructions, and remain under control, and thoroughly stable, at air speeds and in positions which might cause a spin in older types...

...Third, the sale of transportation for inanimate objects...

...Unless and until, through radio equipment, air roads are established, with certain altitudes reserved exclusively for private planes, the limit on private flying, with its dangers of collision, will be established by public opinion and public interest...

...But somewhere in the popular enthusiasm, was lost (perhaps because far less romantic) the more valuable, revenue-producing thought that packages and boxes could now have wings...

...The whole history and economics of transportation bear out the belief that aviation from now on must look first of all to air freight to carry the burden of fixed investment in equipment and terminals...

...In the passenger market itself, aviation's future remains largely a problem of engineering...

...Second, the sale of transportation service to passengers...