The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-01-08
weekly Aviation
AIRLINES SLASH
FARES; AIM AT
RAILWAY RATES
Bank Sends $2,500,000 in
Currency by Plane
Route.
BY ERNIE PYLE
Times STAFF Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8. - Air
travel fares all over the country
have taken a tumble within the
last two weeks. Coast forecast fare
on all three transcontinental lines
dropped from 5000 to $3.50, and on
the fastest of them the trip can
be made in twenty-eight hours.
United Airlines, the biggest air
transport system in the United
States, put its fares down to about
s cents per mile. Immediately the
other big lines followed suit. There
is keen rivalry between them for
the passenger business, and none Of
them has any too much traffic.
The independent airlines chose
without mail subsidies) are con-
tinually bounding the big lines by
dropping their fares. 1t is a healthy
situation and undoubtedly will
force the engineers to produce a
transport plane that will 90 faster
and cheaper, thus eventually bring
ing air fares down to railroad day
coach level.
See Eight Cities at Once
Captain Frank Hawks passed up
the big air races at Miami this year,
in order to make a tour over the
lines of Transcontinental e. West
ern Air. Gieuseppe Bellanca, the
famous designer whose planes have
flown across more oceans than any
other, has not piloted plane him
self since 1919.
Postmaster General Brown has
installed a short wave radio set in
his Office in Washington, so that he
can listen to conversations between
ground stations and planes flying
on his airmail lines. Visibility was
so good the other night that two
pilots of Eastern Air Transport, fly
ing $500 feet over Wilmington, Del,
could see for 100 miles in each di-
rection. They could see New York
and all its suburbs, Trenton, Phila-
delplia, Camden, Wilmington, At
lantic City, Baltimore and Wash
ington.
More than $24,0O0,0OO in bank
clearings, renlittances and negoti-
able securities arrive at Newark air
port every day by air mail and last
week $2,50O,000 in green backs was
flown on an eighteen-passenge
plane Of Eastern Air Transport from
Philadelphia to Greensboro, N. c., to
stop bank run. The passengers on
the ship didn't know the money was
aboard and even the dispatchers
and field attendants along the line
were ignorant Of it.
Plan 15-Minute Service
Transcontinental 81 Western Air
is making a bid for foreign pas
sengers on its airlines, and now
has both Japanese and Chinese
passenger agents on its pay rolls
in San Francisco. The crew of
the dirigible Akron at Lakehurst,
N. j., was called out to help land
an airplane the other day. Pilot
John Pumyea was trying to land
in a sixty ve-naile wind, and the
plane wouldn't stay on the ground,
so fourteen men Of the airship's
crew were called out, and the sec
ond Punyea's plane touched earth
they grabbed it and held it.
The Century Airlines are planning
passenger service at fifteen-minute
intervals between cities of the
middle west within six months,
using a new secretly-built Stinson
monoplane, whose makers claim 1t
will cruise at $50 miles per hour,
Northwest Always has been in
the habit of filming its pilots 81
each time an air mail pouch was
mishandled, and now fines them
IS each time a pouch goes to the
wrong destination. These fines will
be put in special fund, and the
money will be given to the pilot
having the best record at the end
of the year.
The Ludington Airlines New
York Washington recently cut
salaries of all employees 10 to Is
per cent. Clarence Chamberlin,
the New York-to- Germany flier, is
now testing a Packard Diesel air
plane motor flying on nine gallons
of furnace oil per hour, at cents
per gallon.