Eastern Air Lines

“ An accident involving a scheduled air carrier occurred at the Atlanta Municipal Airport, Atlanta, Georgia, about 12:48 p.m. (CST) on November 26, 1940, when a Douglas DC-3, Nc 16082, owned and operated by Eastern Air Lines, was damaged. There were no personal injuries. ”

“ In determining the degree of turbulence we have the testimony of the four Eastern Air Lines pilots who flew through the storm area on the morning of April 3, a meteorological analysis and the testimony of Captain O'Brien and First Officer Crabtree and of their passengers. ”

“ The most clearly remediable factor is, of course, the operating procedures of Eastern. In fact, this accident might have been prevented if Eastern's operations had been so conducted as to insure the pilot's receiving such information and instructions as were, or could reasonably have been expected, to have been available to ground personnel. Special caution in these matters should always be displayed when flights are dispatched over routes where they may encounter distinctly unfavorable weather conditions such as a cold front or line squall type of thunderstorms. ”

“ Whereas a dispute exists between the Eastern Air Lines, Inc., a carrier, and certain of its employees represented by the Flight Engineers' International Association, EARL Chapter, a labor organization ”

“ After departure from New York the flight, apart from slight accumulative delays, was uneventful until it reached Greenville, South Carolina. During the approach to the Greenville Airport, Captain Harmon used 3⁄4 flaps and maintained an airspeed of 90 m.p.h. The approach was toward the north which afforded approximately 4000 feet of runway. At a point about 25 feet south of the southern boundary there is a dyke which runs east and west and which is slightly higher than the airport itself. ”

“ EAL Flight 45 left Boston, Mass., on schedule at 0855 EWT [2] for Miami, Fla., with stops scheduled at New York, N.Y., Washington, D.C., Columbia, S.C., and Jacksonville, Fla. Arrival at New York was at 1011 where a complete crew change was made. ”

“ These towers are normally equipped with radio receivers tuned to air carrier company frequencies as well as to frequencies used by military and privately owned aircraft. They usually are also equipped with a transmitter which operates on 278 kilocycles. ↑ See sketch of Eastern's instrument approach procedure which is incorporated in the company operations manual. ↑ When making an instrument approach from the northeast at Atlanta, Georgia, the normal procedure is to pass over the radio range station at 1800 feet above sea level. ”

“ Before flying on a civil airway under instrument weather conditions, approval must be secured from Airway Traffic Control for the flight, including the altitude at which it is to be flown. ↑ Points at which the exact position of the aircraft may be determined by radio, e.g., a fan marker, a cone of silence marker over a radio range station, or an intersection of radio ranges. ↑ The Civil Air Regulations (sec. 04.532 (d) ) require that all air carrier aircraft be equipped with two altimeters of the sensitive type. Eastern uses an instrument known as Kollsman. ”

“ All the major airlines contributed planes and crews to the vital needs of war. DC-3’s, which a few weeks before had been flying between our big cities, began to fly over oceans and mountain ranges in every quarter of the globe. At the start most of the planes used for Air Transport Command cargo were Douglas DC-3’s and DC-2’s and a few Boeing Stratoliners. The new Douglas DC-4’s being built for the airlines when war began went right off the production lines into service for the Army or Navy. ”

“ A number of short lines operating routes from the Great Lakes and down through the south were soon to be merged to create American Airlines.
In 1928, an air traveler making an extensive trip would be likely to fly in seven or eight different types of planes. He might step into a Fokker tri-motor, change to a single-engined Boeing, ride for some distance in a Ford tri-motor or a Whirlwind-powered Travel Air, and finish his trip in a Curtiss Carrier Pigeon. The planes usually flew low, at between one and two thousand feet. ”

“ The pilot attempted to land on the east-west runway, toward the east, but undershot, contacting the ground about 8 feet from the field boundary and 75 feet from the runway. The wheels struck the boundary, made up of loose rocks approximately fifteen inches high. The aircraft bounced into the air slightly, contacted the ground again very smoothly, and rolled straight ahead for several hundred feet before veering to the right and coming to rest about 1800 feet from the field boundary.
Subsequent investigation indicated that the right landing gear failed when it struck the rocks. ”

“ To comply with the law requiring separation of manufacturing companies from transport organizations, United Airlines was split off into a separate company known as United Airlines Transport Corporation. With the transport link between the eastern and western manufacturing groups thus disrupted, we divided them into two separate companies. The four Connecticut companies, Pratt and Whitney, Hamilton-Standard, Chance Vought, and Sikorsky, comprised the new United Aircraft Corporation. The western group took the name of Boeing Airplane Company. ”

“ Bad weather would often ground a flight and passengers were almost as uncertain as the weather. Many of those pioneer operators had to depend on the dollar-a-ride hops of Sunday sightseers to “keep the wolf from the door.” One service operated 14-passenger converted Navy seaplanes on a route between New York and Havana, and another route between Cleveland and Detroit. Most of these pioneer air transport Operations lasted for only a short time, due to the heavy cost of maintaining the planes and the lack of properly marked air routes. ”

“ There were several things I saw in Europe that are of interest to American aviation. All Europe looks on our air mail service with reverence. There is nothing like it anywhere abroad.
“But, whereas we have airlines, they have passenger lines. All Europe is covered with a network of lines carrying passengers between all [293] the big cities. Now it is up to us to create and develop passenger lines that compare with our mail routes. For this we have natural advantages in the great distances here that lend themselves to rapid transportation by air. ”

“ The Navy also developed their own air transport service and operated in a manner similar to the ATC. This group was known as the Naval Air Transport Service or NATS. The Army Air Transport Command operated its own weather stations, radio ranges, and airfields in the same manner as the commercial lines did in peacetime. Planes flew vital war cargo and personnel on systematic airline procedure. Millions of miles were flown daily by planes rushing tons of men and materials to the far-flung battlefronts of the world. ”

“ With its already great start toward ascendancy, Chicago had rapidly forged ahead, as the air lines developed with the great super-planes. The European planes docked here, and it was the starting point of the South American lines. But now, as they swung high above it, the glistening walls of soft-colored [Pg. 26] tiles made it a great mass of changing, flashing color beneath them. Now they could see a great air liner, twice the size of their plane, taking off for Japan, its six giant propellers visible only as flashing blurs as it climbed up toward them. ”

“ If enterprises of this kind are successfully started, if each of our self-governing Dominions and Colonies encourages civil aviation within its own territory, and develops the air-sense of its people, each portion of the Empire, by a process of natural expansion, and by the gradual extension of local air lines to merge with those from other portions of the Empire, will assist in eventually forming a continuous chain of inter-Imperial air communication. ”

“ When the 80-A was introduced the Boeing Air Transport and the National Air Transport had been merged to form United Air Lines, the first transcontinental airline.
With air transport five years old, by 1930 the speed of planes was only about 100 miles per hour. Engineers and transport men agreed that the air transport plane must be faster. The planes of that day still had a considerable amount of external bracing and many of them were biplanes with strut and wire wing bracings. This caused the drag that was holding down the speed of the transport. ”

“ The Hand on the Stick Early in 1949 the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee of the Senate, under the chairmanship of Senator Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado, began inquiring into the ills of the airline transport industry. Senator Johnson had sat at my table at the dinner given by the aircraft manufacturers to Congressional leaders in aviation in Washington some five years earlier. A man well informed on the whole subject, he now began directing an inquiry that promised to initiate an important forward step in the formulation of American air policy. ”

“ Pacific Air Lines performed all mayor overhauls and all major inspections of its aircraft and components, with the exception of propellers, at the company's San Francisco base The overhaul of propellers was done by an outside agency at Los Angeles the company contracted with International Flight Service, a local company, to taxi and fuel its aircraft, to perform turnaround and daily inspections if needed, and to make all necessary minor repairs. ”

“ Upon our entry into the war, I found myself president of United Aircraft Corporation. In the razzle-dazzle of the wartime Washington merry-go-round, I watched the expansion of air transport until it became a decisive factor in the war. Hurdling the Himalayan Hump and leapfrogging submarine-infested sea lanes, it delivered important persons and critical cargoes to decisive points inaccessible to other forms of transportation. Believing that this performance presaged the advent of expanding air commerce, we manufacturers began investing our earnings in bigger and better transports. ”

“ Oregon was quick to grasp the significance of air transport. No soonei had stunt flying in crude planes become a part of state and county fair programs than adventurous individuals began buying machines for private use. Pastures near population centers became landing fields. As these pioneers showed the possibilities of flying, progressive cities started building airports. By 1936 there were 32 established airports in 31 cities. Three of these—Portland, Medford and Pendleton—are transcontinental lines and many of the others have been recognized as intrastate ports. ”

“ Through this assistance the Nation is building a sound aviation system, operated by private enterprise. Over 6,400 planes are in commercial use, and 9,400 pilots are licensed by the Government. Our manufacturing capacity has risen to 7,500 planes per annum. The aviation companies have increased regular air transportation until it now totals 90,000 miles per day--one-fourth of which is flown by night. Mail and express services now connect our principal cities, and extensive services for passenger transportation have been inaugurated, and others of importance are imminent. ”

“ The new airliners will be so fast that there will be no need for sleeper planes on coast-to-coast trips. Sleeper planes will be used only on long overseas trips. The planes will all carry more passengers during the day and that means that air travel will be almost as economical as surface travel.
The big planes for world travel will be ships like the seventy-ton Martin Mars flying boat and the giant Pan American Consolidated 204-passenger Model 37. Donald Douglas is building two new luxury airliners, the fifty-passenger DC-6 and the 108-passenger DC-7. ”

“ After all, the field, if adequate in area, can grow into an airport.
The activities of the Department of Commerce are admirably summarized in the Air Craft Year Book published by the Aeronautical Chamber [261] of Commerce of America, from which the following paragraphs are quoted:
“Civil aeronautics made great progress during the first year of Federal cooperation and supervision under the Air Commerce Act of 1926, efficiently administered by the Department of Commerce, under the direction of Assistant Secretary William P. MacCracken. New airways were laid out, lighted and mapped. ”

“ There is no doubt that, had the United States government supported its aircraft companies to the same extent as did the British government, commercial aviation in America would have traveled along a smooth road. Even without this support it has made excellent progress. Successful regular services are established between Los Angeles and San Diego, and elsewhere in the West, and in the East many passengers have been carried between New York and Atlantic City, and around the coast of Florida. Plans are being laid for various other airways, including one between Key West and Havana. ”

“ As in World War I, we have seen Army aviation reach the brink of war without being fully prepared. Again we have seen our military leaders and aircraft builders roll up their sleeves and go to work. However, we have never seen anything to equal the development of our Army Air Forces.
From a force which numbered hardly more than 100,000 men and a handful of airplanes at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Army Air Forces have grown to be the world’s greatest aërial striking power. ”