Aeronautics: Return of a Name

Three or four years ago when every long-distance flight or airline merger made front page news, the public was well aware of the name of Fairchild. Besides being the name of the world’s most famed aerial camera, it denoted a good airplane. Fairchild cabin jobs flew mail & passengers, flew prospectors to Canadian gold fields, news photographers to disaster scenes. Like nearly everything else in aviation Fairchild had its slump. As a subsidiary of Aviation Corp. it lost $2,100,000 in 1929, $870,000 in 1930. Next year Sherman Mills Fairchild, its shrewd young president, pulled his company out of Avco, began quietly to build it up again by producing “flivver” planes. His losses last year were only $52.000. Last week Fairchild popped smartly back into the news with an announcement that it had contracted to build the world’s fastest commercial amphibion. The Fairchild amphibion was designed for Pan American Airways which ordered six for $217,680. It will be a single-motor, eight-passenger monoplane for use over sheltered waters and rivers on Pan American’s foreign routes. Its top speed is specified at 180 m. p. h., about 40 m. p. h. better than the fastest commercial amphibion so far. To speed it up that much, Fairchild’s Designer Albert Gassner (oldtime Fokker engineer) had to devise some radical treatment of the pontoons and landing gear, which are what make most amphibions slow. His solution was to make the wheel and wingtip floats fold into the wing, forming a sleek flying-boat when the ship is in flight. The engine, in a stream lined nacelle, is mounted atop the wing. A new wrinkle in amphibion design is an auxiliary 30 h. p. -motor and water propeller to be stowed in the Fairchild’s nose. After alighting on the water the co-pilot will go forward into the nose, flip open a hatch, lower the motor and small propeller into the water. That will be used to maneuver the ship through surface traffic to its mooring, ordinarily a ticklish job. While Pan American refused to say where it planned to use the amphibion, the ship appeared to be neatly suited to the company’s routes in China.