Helicopter Cabs?

Just three weeks after applying to the Civil Aeronautics Board for a postwar air route to Moscow, with way stops, small but lusty Northeast Airlines last week uncorked another breath-taking plan for the future.

With a vast fleet of Igor Sikorsky's newly perfected helicopters, Northeast planned to blanket New England from Manhattan to Fort Kent, Me., with a local airmail and express service operated from the rooftops of post offices and railroad stations in 400 cities and hamlets. Because the helicopter can fly straight up, straight down, backward, forward, horizontally, remain stationary in the air, and be brought to an immediate stop, any flat roof surface no larger than 9 by 12 ft. could serve as an adequate air station. Northeast would connect New England towns by direct helicopter service with main-line terminals served by domestic and transoceanic airlines.

Later, as helicopter engineering develops, air passengers may be carried on local helicopter-taxi hops from downtown districts to outlying airports and suburban areas.

With these grand-scale postwar applications now filed with CAB, Northeast's shrewd president, Samuel Joseph Solomon, said dryly that these two activities, together with its already pending application for service between Boston and New York, are all the company envisages for the present.

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