North to the Arctic

Last week Pan American started survey nights for a regular service from Seattle to Juneau, Alaska, last remaining zig in a zigzag line of connecting air routes up from the southernmost capital of the Western Hemisphere (Buenos Aires). The survey plane, a 15-passenger Sikorsky S-43, followed a roundabout route circling out over the ocean, not because she might not have flown over Canada but because Pan American would rather fly over water than land any day.

There are almost no roads in Alaska, few railroads. Alaskan transportation has gone from dog sleds to planes in one jump.

Four months ago, a Pan American subsidiary, Pacific Alaska Airways, Inc., started overland service from Juneau to Fairbanks via White Horse, Canada. Pacific Alaska was fashioned in 1932 out of two independent lines, operating round Alaska at random in competition with dog teams.

Because there is ice in Juneau harbor some months of the year, Pan American will use land planes instead of their big Clippers--probably the Boeing 307s, scheduled for delivery this autumn. Also it hopes to get Congress to build landing fields, on the same principle by which railroads got land grants. Chief lobbying point is military: when this last zig is filled in, Nome will be only 24 hours from Washington, D. C.

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