AVIATION: Rule Atlcmtica

In the map-hung Manhattan office of modest, genial Vice President James Murchie Eaton one day last week gathered a handful of American Export Airlines executives, pilots, engineers. It was 5 p.m.—quitting time. It was also mid-July—the day they had all been waiting for.

A quarter of an hour had ticked away .when out from a nearby office exploded Executive Vice President John Elliot Slater, jumpy as a terrier. He hollered: “We’ve got it!” American Export had got CAA per mission to go into the U. S. transatlantic air trade, hitherto the monopoly of vast, pioneering Pan American Airways. For more than a year the upstart air line (TIME, April 29) had lazed along, thinking up tasks for its skeleton staff: daily weather maps for its meteorologists to chart, constant checking and rechecking of its only plane — a Consolidated 28, which had already made some experimental hops to Europe. Now it could stop the make-believe.

Less than 60 days ahead of elated American Export was a scheduled flight to Lisbon with mail & express, in 14 months a regular passenger service. More, the newborn line expected to do it non stop and pare Pan Am’s eastbound flying time from 23 to 20½ hours. For that American Export relied on three four-motored Vought-Sikorsky 8-443 to be delivered by United Aircraft Corp. eleven, 14 and 16 months from now. Carbon copies of the U. S. Navy’s new long-range bombers (with mail compartments substituted for bomb racks), the 175-m.p.h. (cruising speed) S-44s will carry 16 passengers, a crew of eleven, and 2,300 pounds of mail & express for 3.600 miles without a stop. Two avid watchers of their future performance will be the Navy and Pan Am, which itself will run non-stop New York-Lisbon service when it gets delivery on six new modified Boeing clippers.

CAB* made clear why it authorized the new line in spite of violent protests from Pan Am: When foreign nations begin competing for Atlantic airlanes, two U. S. air lines may come in handy. Great Britain announced last week that Airways Atlantic, Ltd., subsidiary of big British Overseas Airways Corp. which canceled its survey flights last October, would begin airmail & passenger service within 30 days from “somewhere in England” to New York City’s LaGuardia Field—pending CAB approval.

Britain’s plans stirred up rumors that Germany wants an uncensored airmail route between the Reich and the U. S. (In the summers of 1937 and 1938 Deutsche Lufthansa had made weekly experimental flights to New York.) From abroad also came reports of Nazi pressure on the Petain Government to carry out the plans of Air France Transatlantique which got CAA permission in May for experimental non-commercial flights to LaGuardia Field. Application by either Government for U. S. landing rights might well bring the first test of whether the U. S. is going to do business with Hitler.

* Upon its transfer into the Department of Commerce June 30, the CAA became the Civil Aeronautics Board.