The Alaska daily empire., 1919-01-20

I service for weeks at a time. No | mail has been delivered to Kodiak or points to the Westward since last 1 October
 l Governor Thomas Riggs Jr, of Al aska, has been working on the pro | ject of airplane or scaplane mail
 service to Alaska for some time, and
 yesterday had a long conference with | E. N. Gott, vice President of the
 Boeing Airplane Company of Seattle
 on the matter. Another conference
 at which postal officials will be pres
 ent will be held Friday.
 A number of aviators in the ser | aska say that one of the greatest obstacles will be found in the Taku winds, which blow with extreme vio- lence during the Winter months. 9th | CTS, however claim that these winds will not interfere to any great ex- | tent with a seaplane, such as is used , by the Navy and which must stand l test against a sixty-mile wind and against a forty-mile sea.
 The original plan of development of the airplane service, according to
 information furnished at the Post office Department, was to gradually
 extend the present service between
 New York and Washington and be- tween Washington and New York and Chicago to points further West ward
 l The web of aerial lines planned by f the department was laid out on a
 unit basis by Oscar Praeger, second
 assistant Postmaster Genedal, and an | extension of the service from Wash | ington to Boston is now in prepara-
 tion. This unit will later be extend
 ed to Montreal in cooperation with the Canadian Government and with end in view a number of discussions already have been held with Canad-
 ian officials to arrange the details
 Another line is planned to run South
 west from here to Atlanta. Divid
 ing at that point Key West and New
 Orleans.
 Another unit will extend almost
 due Westward from Washington
 passing through Cincinnati and St
 Louis and termining at Kansas City
 Air lines will radiate from Chicago to Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Paul
 Omaha, Denver, Cheyenne, Salt Lake
 City and San Francisco. From Salt
 Lake City another line will connect
 with Butte, Spokane and Seattle, and still another will reach from Seattle
 to Alaska.
 Will Push Alaska Unit
 I Speaking generally the plan was to gradually extend the service from Washington along the lines indicated above, which would have placed the Seattle-Alaska branch of the service the last to be installed. The condi- tions of the mail service in Alaska and the fact that at the best Alaska has only a steamship service, while other cities have the advantages of the quicker deliveries to be obtained by railroads, has made the Seattle Alaska unit among the first of the
 extensions to be considered.
 Although the plans have not been fully formulated, an effort will be made to make the Seattle-Alaska service self-supporting. A rnte of g cents letter may be charged for l airmail delivery from Seattle to Ju- neau, and it is believed that num- | Der of business men would gladly pay the extra charge rather than suf- | fer the delay which they must en- dure under the present conditions. l The present plans are to construct | seaplanes with a carrying capacity of 1000 pounds and these ships will | make three round trips a week to Juneau, calling at Petersburg, Ket- chikan and Prince Rupert enroute. The trip from Seattle to Juneau can
 be made in one flight with two stops
 for fuel. Two planes will be needed in the service Three details, how
 ever, are purely tentative.
 Seeks Contractor
 i About the only obstacle in the way
 of the immediate adoption of the Se-
 attle- Juneau service is the lack of a contractor. The department natural l Iy would prefer to have the mail de- Iiyered by contsdct, but being unable
 to make suitable contracts for the New York Chicago service, the work
 is done directly by the department itself. The department owns the