The Daily Alaska empire., 1941-01-02
Aviation En Remarkable Growth
 During Year Just Ended
BOMBER K OFF 10 GREAT BRITAIN {

NEW YORK, Jan. 2. - Commer- cial aviation in the United States showed the most remarkable growth in its comparative brief history in 1940.
 Movement of passengers, air mail and air express reached all-time highs. New York's new $40000,000 LaGuardia Field settled down to handling capacity business. Phila- delphia opened it's new multi-million dollar airport. VIVA instituted the first four-engine domestic transport service with it's fleet of 33 passenger stratoliners, Pan American Airways opened new route across the South Pacific, and the worlds first airlines terminal was completed in New York. These were the major high lights in a year in which commer- cial aviation forged ahead on all fronts.
 Anticipated Increase
 The years end found airline ex- ecutiveS somewhat concerned over the problem of handling 1941's an ticipated increase in traffic should the government freeze" airline equipment in the name of national defense. The Priorities Board re- gently authorized deferred delivery on transport planes previously ord cred by the airlines to meet normal expansion needs. If the order is not modified, the airlines' own position in the national defense structure will be weakened through lack of equipment to meet possible defense emergency needs and schedule ex- pansion. There was considerable hope among airline executives, how ever, that the order would be relaxed within the next two or three months.
 Records Broken
 Passenger traffic on the airlines broke all-time records during the past 12 months. The Air Transport Association of America reported in it's latest figures that passenger vol ume increased 6l 42 per cent in the first 10 months over the correspond ing period of 1899. A total of 2,013,- 20e revenue passengers were flown 89G,525,153 revenue passenger miles in l940 as against 1,219,928 pas sengers and 551 ,690,659 revenue pas senger miles in the same period of the preceding year.
 An extremely heavy volume of fall and Christmas mail indicated that air mail shipments would eX- ceed 20 billion pound miles for 1940. Latest figures from the Post Office covered only the first seven months during which all the airlines performed II .259B20 ,789 air. mail pound miles as against 9,516,- 103,532 miles for the comparable period of 1939
 Air Express Shipments
 Air express shipments reached the cordbreaking total of 3.647 457 pounds in the first ten months of this year, an increase of 29.39 per cent over the corresponding period of last year. Officials estimate the in- crease for the entire year will exceed 35 per cent
 A half-do2en new airports were opened. others were under construc- tion and many more were placec in the planning stage to handle the flow of air traffic. New York's famous LaGuardia Field, which was opened in December of 1889, was hard pressed to accommo- date the greatly increased number of flight schedules that began op- erating during the year. It's facilities became so heavily taxed that of liCldio SOliCCQCS tllC llCCu Ol dliOtlicI airport in the metropolitan area to relieve the congestion
 New Airport
 Philadelphia air travellers who for years have been crossing the Dela- ware River to Camden, N. J., to board their plane, welcomed the opening of the vast new Philadel- phia airport. With it's miles of flat approaches and long runways, this field takes rank as one of the fin est in the world Washington dedi- cated new and larger airport, which will be opened to traffic dur ing the calendar year Other cities which dedicated new or improved fields included Albany, Albuquerque, Houston, Sioux City and Dallas.
 Faster airline schedules between Atlantic and Pacific seaboards were established when VIVA started op- erating it's new fleet of 4-engine, 33- passenger Boeing stratoliners early in July These planes opened a new era in domestic airline transporta- ton by innovating a system of fly ing above the weather" The trans- ports are equipped with s'pressur- iZpd' rahjpc SO that na cSpnpprc nav