Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1920-12-02
PROGRESS ~, Air Mail Service

L
wv vHEN air mail service is established
wv between Atlanta and New York City,
as it will be in the course of the
next sixty days if all goes we'll with official
plans, the latest achievement will be scored
in national enterprise which has been
steadily developing for some two and a half
years. 1t was on May Is, 1918, in the face
of many doleful prophecies that the United
States Postoffice Department launched it's
experiment of carrying mail by airplane be-
tween Washington and New York. So en-
couraging were the results that in the ensu-
ing year a similar line was inaugurated be-
tween New York and Cleveland, and then ex-
tended to Chicako. Some day. the now
converted sceptics exclaimed, 1.-The air post
will sweep on to San Francisco" They spoke
more in atonement of their original lll-bod-
ing than in expectation of ever seeing their
happier prophecy come to pass. But on Sep
TENDER IS, 1920, service was started between
Gotham and the Golden Gate; and now the
transcontinentaI line of two thousand six
hundred and sixteen miles is in regular OPP
Grafton.
Leaving New York at $50 a. M, Eastern
time, the mail airplane arrives at Chicago
at 27 that afternoon; leaves al the next
morning and arrives at Cheyenne, Wyoming,
4:25 p. M; thence it departs at $50 a. m.
the following day, which is the third morn
ing of it's flight, and at 1925 p. m. descends
at San Francisco. With the planes thus fly
ing only by day, the time of the transconti-
mental trip is nevertheless greatly reduced
But soon, it is expected, they will be flying
by night as we'll, and then mail will be sped
from New York to San Francisco in thirty
six hours
Speed writes Brigadier General William
Mitchell, in the December Review of Re-
vic ic nra0nminant characteristic
airplane traffic" And speed is being contin-
ually developed, not only in the machines
themselves, but also by increasing their hours
of flight and b. adjusting them more and
more advantageOusly to prevailing winds.
''Speed varies," says General Mitchell, from
sixty-five miles an hour with the slowest
airplanes-such as the Curtiss training ships.
with 150-horsepowe" motors-to eighty
miles an hour with the DeHavilands with
40-horsepower motors. At this speed
more than eighty-five sper cent of the trips
are made on scheduled time" 1t is worth
noting in this connection that in the first
twelvemonth of tho Washington-Ph Philadelphia
New York service, ninety-three per cent OIL
all the trips scheduled were completed; and
that of the seven per cent of failures, more
than half were caused by stormful weather,
in spite of which there were successful flights
in gales as swift as sxty-eight miles an
hour In the year now drawing to a close,
both the regularity and the average speed
of the service will show considerable better
ment thanks to improved safeguards against
the freezing of radiators and engines and to
the general efficiency gain which comes with
experience.
system which reduces the time OF mail
transmission fifty to one hundred per cent
or more is obviously of vast value to COM
merce, if it can be maintained at reason
able cost Touching this point, General
Mitchell refers to figures which show, as lar
as the experiment has gone, that mail carry
ing by airplane is cheaper than by railway.
''This at first appears strange he says,
until it is considered that the mail cars are
really travelling postoffices, that heir size
is always the same, that is, siXty-foot car
that is always filled with racks and cases
which may or may not be full, and are PAID
for on the size of the car, regardless of con-
tents The postoffice figures show that 1t
costs four hundred thousand uoilaiI annu-
ally to operate fifteen UNDERGROUND mail
carving airplane on one round daily TRIP
between New York and Chicago, and that
the use of the airplane between these two
terminals does away with the railroad taclll-
ties which cost five hundred thousand. In
other words, hey claim that saving OF one
hundred thousand dollars would be made IN
the item of COST
This. of course, is not to be taken as i'm
plying that the end of the railway mail ser
vice is at hand or is within calculable dis
lance But it can be doubted no longer that
air mail service is quite practicable, and Tor
some purposes exceedingly advantageous. An
aggregate of nearly seven thousand miles Is
now traversed by the nations aerial carriers
each day. and important additio' are forth
coming Of these, the Acknowledgment
link will be one of special interest, marking
as it will the advent of a new era Of aviation