Evening star., 1936-11-29
BY DEVON FRANCIS.

TONS commercial lite.
BY DEVON FRANCIS.
TT WAS Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
who wrote almost a century
For I dipped into the future,
Far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world,
And all the wonder that would be-;
Saw the heavens filled with commerce,
Argosies of magic sails,
Pilots Of the purple twilight,
Dropping down with costly bales.
The muse which descended on Ten
nyson took no account of capital in
vestments and dividend payments, but
1t visualized the pictorial aspects OF
commerce aviation, as of the year
1886. with surprising fidelity.
Tennyson's dream Of world
transformed by mans inventiveness
is realized in hundreds of great-winged
transport airplanes traversing thou
sands Of miles of charted airways over
six continents and other thousands of
miles across oceans.
1t is realized in the money invested
in flying and ground equipment
some $3O,000,0OO in the United States
alone. 1t is realized in the punctu-
atty with which transports arrive and
depart at hundreds of airports
throughout the United States.
Apply Tennyson's meter to the Zep-
pelin shuttle service between Frank
fort-on-Main and Lakehurst, and to
the projected oceanic service using
termini and you have transatlantic
commercial flight in rhyme, written
In the year 1842.
Figures Show Vast Advance.
Air transportation of passengers
mail and express is out of the play
thing class. 1t was fewer than 1C
years ago that the capital investment
OF American commercial transport
companies was comprised of a few
dozen airplanes, used largely for mail
carriage, and meager ground equip
ment. Look at today's figures:
AS of July l, 1886, more than 40C
airplanes were operated by American
Air Lines in both continental and
overseas service. Investment in flying
100000. in other than flying equip
ment, 16,500,000. The industry had
5000 employees, of whom 692 were
pilots and 423 were co-pilotS.
Miles flown by the American air
transport industry totaled 63,540, ,233
in 1885, and, in the first six months
of this year, 33,523.075. There were
57,509 miles of American-operated
air transport routes, of which 28,385
were continental and 29,124 foreign.
Before the World War the airplane
was a powered kite. After the war
men who cared little for their necks
hedge-hopped around the country in
machines of war vintage, busting the
tops of trees with their undercarriages
to get a gasp out of the spectators.
The flying circus" for time was an
American institution. But the Gov
eminent had found a peace-time use
for the airplane; it was carrying the
mails.
Passenger Travel Gains.
BY 1925 private carriers had taken
over the mails, but essentially the air.
plane was only motor harnessed for
the carriage of letters and packages, a
machine in which the occasional pas
senger endured discomfort for the
sake Of speed. True, the late Will
Rogers regularly used the airplane,
but even he, single-handed, could not
dispel the public's distrust of what
the pilots call travel upstairs"
The picture OF air travel in 1925 is
etched in the account books OF the
transport companies: A total of 5782
passengers carried. Airmail poundage
was 810.855. Express shipments to-
tailed 1855 pounds.
The air lines themselves may have
been responsible in part for public
apathy. Not until 1928 did they be-
gin making serious bids for passenger
revenue. Then travel figures began
mounting. They mounted straight
through the depression. BY 1929 the
air lines could boast of 173, ,4O5 pas
sengers for the year. The following
year fl ,oU0 went alOII.
Using the passenger-mile as an in
dex (the term denotes one passenger
carried one mile) the jump in travel
by air since 1880 Is reflected in these
figures: 103,747,249 passenger miles
flown in 1880 and 800 1853, ,431 in 1885
Shedding Hard at First.
The new companies often discovered
the shedding was hard. Much of the
terrain over which they flew provided
inadequate landing facilities for emer-
gencies, and not infrequently some OF
them, hunting for missing part OF
their capital investment, found it a
tangle of wreck. An airplane is an
expensive apparatus to replace; 1896
2l-passenger transport, for instance
costs 100000.
The more conservative companies
carried on. They provided in some
instances their own intermediate land
ing fields and followed other safety
policies so rigid that even after a dis
patcher had approved given fligh,
the pilot himself could refuse to taht
. ship aloft.
10 this day allow the pilot to name
his own weather.
Airline operation is expensive, even
discounting the possibility of acci-
dents. One of the oldest of the
American operating companies re-
ported loss of 81 1893 for the calendar
year 1885 and another well-estab-
lshed company, flying frequent sched-
ules coast to coast, had a net deficit
OF II cents a share for the first
quarter of 1886 on total of 623, ,135
outstanding shares Of stock
Even with the help of the Depart
ment of Commerce, which establishes
and maintains elaborate aids to avi-
cation navigation in the air), the
industry often is hard put to make
revenues match expenses. Part of
this Is due to the cost of necessary
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