Evening star., 1941-08-17
.AirIines Facing
Grave Shortage
Of Planes
British Get Transports,
Express and Truvel
Needs Expand
BY FRANK MacMILLEN,


NEW YORK. Aug. 16-While the
Eastern seaboard faces shortage of
gasoline and other petroleum prod
ucts this winter, the whole Nation Is
threatened with shortage of COM
mercial airline transportation.
The gasoline shortage stems from
the transfer of between so and 100
ocean tankers to British service.
Airline transportation may be dis
rupted by the transfer of transport
planes to the British.
In the case of oil, every possible
conservation step is being taken to
alleviate the prospects Of danger,
but there doesn't seem to be any,
thing any one is willing to do about
the prospective scaling down of the
best airline transportation service
in the world.
Thus far the airlines, which shut
tie in the form of a giant dome over
the United States, have given up for
British use about 100 airliners.
There are left to them about 300
transport planes.
Mileage Rises Steadily.
Flying mileage is rising month by
month. The lines are carrying the
most passengers in their history.
Most important of ALL they are fly
ing express in quantities never
dreamed Of.
And that express constitutes prob
ably the most important materials
in transit in the United States to-
day. The vast majority of those
packages comprise vital necessities
for national defense industries.
No one is permitted to say now
adays just what percentages of ship
ments are destined for any particu-
lar use, but it is we'll known that
aircraft factories themselves use a
vast amount of airline transporta-
ton facilities.
Needed tools. special parts. secret
drawings and instruments are being
flown from factory to factory to
speed production to the utmost.
The same thing is true of airline
passengers. No longer are stew
ardeSses bothered with the old
fashioned giggling of first-fighters.
The men and women who consti-
tute most passenger lists today are
hurrying about the Nation on ma
tional defense business. Some of
| the passengers these days have put
in more hours in fight than the
co-pilots.
Airline managements are worried
sick over problems of how to operate
at peak efficiency with diminished
equipment Airplanes and engines
must be serviced and repaired with
extra-sized staffs and kept flying.
Already a few fight schedules
have been dropped-not because
! there was no use for them but
because there were no planes to
fly them.
Defense Role Seen.
/ The airline people assert Their
efficient operations are as important
/ to national defense as any other in
the country There are MANY
officers in the War Department and
in the Navy known to support this
/ contention.
And it's also known that these biz
transports, which have carried
hundreds of thousands of Americans
on business and pleasure around the
country for years are also the only
civilian landplanes made which can
be depended upon to fly the Atlantic
on repeated trips in the grim bus
iness of delivering to Great Britain
vital perSonages and necessities in
the war against Germany.
In other words, both Great Britain
and the United States needs those
! airplanes. and there Just aren't
enough of them to go around.
One remedy would be to build
more of the big transports but that
takes time and there isn't much
time and planes manufacturers have
been ordered to devote all their
| facilities to the greatest output of
warplanes the world has seen.
Everything in the industry is sub
Servient to that one impelling
motive: Make more and better war
planeS-bomberS and fighters-than
Germany can turn out.
So. today the airlines, graduating
into full industrial maturity from
20 years of fighting for bare exist
ence and striving to the utmost to
serve national defense, are faced
with a crisis which is not OF their
own making-except in the degree
that they have helped to make the
world airminded.
a A.