Aeronautics: Pan American’s Knot

Pan American Airways has thrown a noose of airlines around South America and the Caribbean Sea, roping 32 countries. The U. S. knot of the noose is the Miami, Fla. airport. To perfect knot and noose, President Juan Terry Trippe had scheduled for the next three years a $5,000,000 program of building planes and airports. Last week he announced that Pan American will go ahead at once with the complete program, to take advantage of low costs and boost President Roosevelt’s recovery campaign.

Largest item of the program is a $1,000,000 seaplane airbase on Miami’s shore. Last week Fred Howland, Inc. of Miami was awarded the master contract for the terminal building. The base will provide for the simultaneous arrival of four of Pan American’s huge “Clipper” flying boats, the handling of 500 to 600 passengers. It will provide customs and immigration offices, be rated a U. S. port of entry. Clearance is allowed on the marine runways and loading docks for wing spans of more than 200 ft.; a mile-long deep water channel has been dredged straight out into Biscayne Bay.

Last week Pan American’s long-legged technical adviser, Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, jaunting across the North Atlantic with his Wife Anne to survey a transoceanic route for Pan American, arrived in Copenhagen in an Eskimo fur coat. When cheering Danes nearly swamped his red-bodied, white-winged Lockheed in Copenhagen harbor, he took off again, came down in the sanctity of the naval airport.