AVIATION: Flight Preliminaries

U.S. airlines last week sprouted all over the postwar map. Into the Washington offices of the Civil Aeronautics Board came a shower of airline route applications —from Honolulu to Moscow, from Boston to Guatemala City.

Biggest, most far-flung application came from New England’s little Northeast Airlines, which before the war operated only a handful of airplanes over 869 miles between Boston and New Brunswick, has since grown toward postwar power on military cargo flights across the North Atlantic (TIME, Dec. 14). Now Northeast wants to fly passengers, mail and express freight over 22,866 route miles between Boston, Moscow and at least nine other European cities: “Boston to Moscow in 18 hours … at [fares] no greater than third-class transatlantic steamship fare.” Other applications:

>Giant United Airlines wants to buy 75% stock ownership in Mexico’s twelve-year-old, 1,700-mile Lineas Aereas Mineras, which flies from the U.S. border to Mexico City, other points. Control of L.A.M.S.A. would give United a feeder line into Mexico, put it in a good spot to hop into air-minded South America.

>Hawaiian Airlines (88% owned by Inter-Island Steam Navigation Co.) wants a 2,600-mile run between Hawaii and Los Angeles, would fly passengers, mail and express. CAB has already refused to let Matson Navigation and Inter-Island join with Pan American on this route. Reason: Such control of an airline would open the way for a monopoly.

> As a sign of what postwar moving days may be like, Pittsburgh’s wide-awake W. J. Dillner Transfer Co. applied to operate an air-cargo line to haul household goods anywhere in the U.S. and Alaska. The company wants to fly pianos, refrigerators, kitchen stoves, etc., would start out with four cargo planes (five-and ten-ton load capacity) and six gliders (two-or three-ton loads).

CAB also granted an application—Pan American’s three-year-old petition for a New Orleans-Guatemala City route. Pan American will start service within five weeks, will use four-engine, 33-passenger Boeing clippers for the 1,100-mile over-the-Gulf hop. Biggest advantage: U.S. citizens will have their first south-central international airport (other southern ports: Miami, Los Angeles, Fort Worth and Brownsville, Tex.). Biggest disadvantage: cramped facilities at New Orleans, where the largest hangar leaves three feet of Clipper wingtip in the rain.

With a few exceptions like Pan American’s New Orleans application, CAB will probably pigeonhole all route petitions for the duration. But they still have significance aplenty—they foreshadow a postwar battle for transportation routes unparalleled since U.S. railroaders fought head-to-head in the roaring ’70s and ’80s.