CAB and the American Sky

Twenty billion dollars' worth of planes will be built by U.S. men & women this year. Next year they will build half again as many (in its peak year the automobile industry produced less than four billions' worth of cars).

How many planes will be built in peacetime?

By the end of this year the U.S. Armed Forces will have trained three million men in all phases of aviation.

How many will use this knowledge and skill in postwar aviation?

The answers to these questions affecting the American future will be determined by 1) how many civilians buy and fly private planes; 2) how many new air routes are created within the U.S. and from the U.S. to foreign countries.

Commercial airlines--like private flying --are controlled by the rules and regulations of the Civil Aeronautics Board, nominally under the Department of Commerce but empowered to act as an independent agency. CAB consists of five oddly assorted Presidential appointees who have been catapulted into the prize administrative berths of the 20th Century --into perhaps the most crucial regulatory task in American history.

> Chairman of CAB is a handsome, hardworking former corporation lawyer named Lloyd Welch Pogue, 44, who is fully aware of the importance of his job.

> CAB's technical expert is tall, stooped Edward Pearson Warner, 49, one of the best scientific brains in aviation--he was chosen by the Royal Aeronautical Society to give this year's Wilbur Wright Memorial Lecture in London.

> Relations with politicians, airline heads and people who want something are the forte of fast-minded, diplomatic Harllee Branch, 63, a onetime Washington correspondent of the Atlanta Journal, who worked with Jim Farley in the 1932 campaign, later became Assistant Postmaster General in charge of air mail.

> Soft-spoken Oswald Ryan, 55, is the CAB legalist. He was formerly general counsel of the Federal Power Commission.

> CAB's fifth and newest member is Bible-spouting Josh Lee, 51, defeated last fall for re-election to the U.S. Senate from Oklahoma. Lee last week was inspecting air routes and bases in South America.

Air minded, Earthbound. CAB, under this leadership, has managed to evolve a fairly clear program without serious opposition (though a low ceiling impends). This program is based on four principles: 1) railroads, bus companies, steamship lines and other common carriers must not be allowed to operate airlines (CAB thinks the spirit of the act which created it is opposed to their doing so, on grounds that they would retard aviation's progress because their primary interest has been non-aeronautic); 2) existing and future airlines must not be allowed to monopolize domestic or foreign routes; 3) the less government subsidy of airlines, the better; 4) low passenger fares and freight rates.

With the last two principles the airlines agree almost unanimously. Of the first, the now air-minded railroads, steamship lines, bus companies and trucking firms are contemptuous. Many of the 224 applications for new air routes piling up before CAB have been made by some of the biggest earthbound transportation companies. And an ever-expanding lobby in Washington is now working on Congress to revise the Civil Aeronautics Act specifically to permit such carriers to compete in the air.

Pressure Area. CAB has not yet acted on any of the 224 applications. Until three weeks ago there was no expectation that it would until the war was over. But because of the present need for planning postwar expansion, CAB announced on June 21 that it would begin hearings (probably in September) on domestic applications. Applications for foreign routes will not be considered until war's end.

The subject of foreign air routes is the main concern of a hush-hush Interdepartmental Committee on International Aviation, of which CABoss Pogue is a member and Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle Jr. is chairman. Other members : Artemus Gates and Robert A. Lovett, Assistant Secretaries for Air of Navy and War; Wayne Chatfield Taylor, Under Secretary of Commerce; and Milo Perkins, executive director of the Board of Economic Warfare. Their report will probably be made public next September, when an Anglo-American conference on postwar aviation will be held in Washington.

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