Commercial aviation

“ A big plane must have two engines, one of which could keep the plane flying if the other failed. Boeing went to work with this in mind.
Near Los Angeles, the young man who had been dreaming of big commercial transport planes since the Wright Brothers’ trials at Fort Meyer, also was thinking of two-engined transports that could fly on one engine. From the time Donald Douglas’ World Cruisers had circled the globe, his aircraft had grown larger and larger. His orders, however, were for Army, Navy, and Coast Guard planes; not for great commercial airliners. ”

“ The former method, allowing of independent commercial expansion, is better suited to British mentality and requirements, but its success will depend on a genuine endeavour to make commercial aviation the real and vital basis of our air power. Experience in commercial operation cannot be gained by the exploitation of air routes or the carriage of mails or passengers under Service auspices. It is only by running transport services, as far as possible under private management, that operational data can be obtained, economies effected, and the design of strictly commercial machines improved. ”

“ Unless some startling innovation—a much cheaper fuel for example, or a successful helicopter—revolutionizes commercial aviation, its near-future is unlikely to stray beyond the extension of airways over distances of about five hundred to two thousand miles. These are likely to be covered mostly by heavier-than-air craft, although, as in Germany, dirigibles will have their place.
Extension of air traffic is especially probable in industrial and agricultural countries of large area, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, India and the South American republics. ”

“ Aviation has transformed modern life. The Golden Age of Flight during the 1920s and 1930s captured the imagination of the American people, and soon opened commercial opportunities for transport and trade. Two world wars led to the development of the modern U.S. Air Force, strengthening our national security and enabling us to command the battlefield and protect our homeland from the sky. Aviation has also connected far-away nations, changing the way we conduct business, spend our leisure time, and spread new ideas. ”

“ A large commercial air fleet will provide, not only a reserve of men and machines, but it will keep in existence an aircraft industry, with its designing and constructional staffs, capable of quick and wide expansion in emergency; and such an industry will not be employed on the design of contrivances for use in a possible war, but on meeting the practical requirements of everyday air transport and navigation. ”

“ The only result can be, from all the interest and importance attached to aviation, that after the war is over, large commercial uses will develop which will offer employment to those who go into the work at this time for military reasons. No one can predict exactly what turn the situation will take, but there is every indication that aviation has graduated from the primary class of experimental work and is to be considered now as an industry along with the automobile business, motor-boat business, etc. ”

“ Military air supremacy can best be assured by the intensive development of industrial air organization for commercial purposes. The conception of civil aviation as the mainstay of air power as a whole is right. Service aviation is bound by technical and financial limits; its scope confined to the requirements of war. Civil aviation, on the other hand, opens out a prospect of productive expansion. The steady growth of the Continental services is already beginning to demonstrate the importance of air transport. ”

“ Aviation engines are too light and too powerful for ordinary tasks, and no real market for airplanes has yet existed in the United States. Consequently, the sales of air service surplus were virtually limited to commodities having commercial use, such as tires, photographic equipment, linen fabric, fur used in making aviators’ clothing, and the like. ”

“ In aeronautics, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has conducted an effective and productive research and technology program that continues to contribute materially to the enduring preeminence of United States civil and military aviation. Two-thirds of the world's commercial aircraft fleet is American designed and built, accounting for some $10 billion in positive trade balance in 1982. ”

“ In plane-to-plane combat our military pilots showed a courage and initiative unequaled by ally or foe.
With our entry into the war, our infant aviation industry also picked up speed. With typical American energy it built up an enviable production record before the end of the war. As America had no combat airplane designs at the start of the war, our industry turned out planes and engines of foreign design. Aircraft factories built English DH-4 observation planes, Handley-Page bombers, and SE-5 fighter planes. ”

“ It is well in these early days, when flight is with the general public a very special and occasional event, to remember what has happened since Watt developed the steam-engine only a few generations ago, when Columbus set the first ship westward, or when America's first train ran over its rough tracks near the Quincy quarries.
The development of aviation will be world-wide and will include all sorts and races of men. The nations all start pretty much abreast. Those which developed war air services have an advantage in material and experience, but this is a matter only for the moment. ”

“ America's aerospace industry has experienced enormous growth and development since the Wright brothers' first flight. It has strengthened our economy, created new business and recreational opportunities, freed us from many of the limits of time and distance, and made our Nation's aviation system the finest in the world. ”

“ This has been the case at the birth of every great development in human progress and will undoubtedly be the case with the science of flight. Until a field becomes standardized it offers extremes on both sides rather than a dull, dreary, but safe average.
As aviation runs into every phase of activity it will require every kind of man—manufacturer, scientist, mechanic, and flier. It offers problems more interesting and more complex than almost any others in the world. The field is new and virgin, the demand world-wide, and the rewards great. ”

“ Although America was actually the birthplace of the airplane, many years passed after the first flight of the Wright Brothers before there was any real consideration of the military or civil values of aviation. That aviation did progress at all in its early years was due to the efforts of a few fledgling military fliers, a group of barnstormers, and a handful of aircraft builders.
Working closely together, these men flew and experimented with our first flying machines. They risked their lives time and again in order to learn everything possible about flying and the flying machine. ”

“ From the war two new methods of transportation have emerged--the aeroplane and the airship. To the business man neither of these is at the present juncture likely to commend itself on the basis of cost per ton mile. When, however, it is considered that the aeroplane is faster than the express train and the airship's speed is double that of the fastest merchant ship, it will be appreciated that for certain commercial purposes both these mediums for transport have their possibilities. ”

“ Although prevented from any great expansion in the years following World War I, the Army led the way in many phases of aviation. United States Army planes were the first to fly around the world. Army aviation also pioneered night flying and the use of the lighted airfield, refueling in the air, and radio communication between ground and plane. ”

“ Some of the best engineering41 talent of the world was diverted from many and various fields to the one task of supplying the demands of the military aeronauts for more speed, more power, more reliable motors, better materials and appliances. Thus the war not only perfected aeronautics—especially aviation—as an art, but practically created it as an industry. At the close of hostilities the world found itself in possession of a vast fleet of aircraft, a multitude of aircraft factories, and a great army of trained aeronauts. ”

“ Why, the United States government, to increase the interest in aviation, and to encourage inventors, has offered a prize of twenty thousand dollars to the first person who takes his airship from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or rather, from New York to San Francisco with but two landings. ”

“ The first landing on the water by an aeroplane fitted with airbags, the first flight from the deck of a ship, the first flight up the Thames, not to mention many other incidents in the progress of record-making, must all be credited to the Short factory. The brothers held that the right way to advance aviation was to strengthen the resources of the aeroplane-designing firms, so that they might carry out their ideas without being dependent on Government demands, and the extraordinary success of the Short designs for aeroplanes and seaplanes did much to promote that creed. ”

“ Germany, France, Britain, and Holland were after franchises in South America too. There, as in the Far East, they got the rights to fly, not by government pressure, but by selling aviation as a valuable business asset to any nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No invention save possibly the telephone and the automobile ever attained so prodigious a development in so brief a time. Wise observers hold that the demand for these machines is yet in its infancy, and that when the end of the war shall lead manufacturers and designers to turn their attention to the commercial value of the airplane the flying craft will be as common in the air as the automobiles at least on our country roads. ”

“ The pilot of a helicopter of today is a very busy fellow. New developments, however, will probably simplify the operation of the machine.
{102}
The year 1945 marks the beginning of the forty-third year of powered flight in America. Before we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the first flight of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk air travel will be the world’s primary means of transportation. No spot on the globe will be more than fifty hours distant from wherever you may live. Truly the shortest distance between any two points on earth will be an airline! ”

“ They were not, and everything is being done to make the aeroplane do man’s bidding as easily and as readily as the steamboat, electric car, steam-engine, and automobile.
Even though the aeroplane does travel the shortest route in the shortest time between any two given points, before a sufficient number of passengers can be induced to travel via the aerial line to make it financially profitable to the transportation company the public must be assured that it is reasonably safe; that they can fly in comfort ”

“ Today aviation is a key element in American life. It has grown to become one of America's greatest enterprises for jobs and services as well as for national defense. America's air transportation system is the finest in the world and a prime public carrier in the United States. ”

“ In 1917, at the time of writing this book, there are probably thirty distinct types of airplanes being manufactured for commercial and military use, and not less than fifty thousand are being used daily over the battlefields of Europe. ”

“ It was the lightest per horsepower aviation engine in the World and was used to power the American-built DH-4 observation plane used by the Army in the latter part of the war. Considering the fact that it was only a dozen years since man had first flown in a powered airplane and that our knowledge of aërial warfare was extremely limited, both manufacturers and aviators did a splendid job in the First World War. ”

“ Out of the background of the airplane story to date, one might argue the other way around, namely that once the rigid controls and restraints are imposed, the growth pattern becomes stabilized. Mr. Norden went on to argue with persuasion:
“Aviation is relatively a new business. Air freight, as distinguished from other forms of aviation business, is in its infancy. Yet the entire aviation industry is hedged about with red tape, the like of which has never been encountered in any other form of American industry. One has merely to look at legal payments made by some of the certificated carriers. ”

“ In the high-flying, high-speed Stratocruiser and the fast Liberator Liner we see a type of transport that will become familiar in early postwar days. The development of airplanes with great load-carrying ability will have a great effect on the cost of air travel. Transports like the 100-passenger Stratocruiser will soon bring the cost of air travel within the reach of anyone who now can afford regular train fares.
Postwar days will also see a great increase in the use of air cargo planes. Typical of the cargo plane of the future is the Fairchild C-82 Packet, now in use as a military transport. ”

“ Scientific development has gone so infinitely far ahead of actual production that as yet aviation is not being put to a fraction of its use.
Even more serious, however, is the general public failure to realize the gift which is within their reach. Flying was first a circus stunt and later a war wonder. The solid practical accomplishments have been lost sight of in the weird or the spectacular. ”