The Rich Get Richer?

United Air Lines last week bit the hand that regulates its diet. In an angry blast at the Civil Aeronautics Board, which controls all flying routes, United said: "The Board is utterly unpredictable. . . . It has become so intent upon aiding the small carriers (and incidentally making richer the rich men who now control them) that it is slighting its . . . all important duty . . . to develop air transportation . . . for the traveling public."

United's President William A. ("Pat") Patterson was mad because CAB had turned down United's request to fly a cut-off route between Los Angeles and Denver on United's New York to San Francisco main line. Instead, CAB had given the permit to smaller Western Air Lines. As an estimated 50,000 transcontinental passengers a year will fly over the route, many of them on sleeper planes, this might mean that they would be routed out of bed in the middle of the night to change planes. To avert this, CAB suggested that Western and United interchange crews at Denver, thus fly each other's sleeper planes. Patterson refused. In asking for a rehearing of the case, he loosed his blast against CAB.

There was small chance that the Civil Aeronautics Board would change its mind. There was less chance that it would change the CAB policy on air routes. Roughly, this policy will be to build up small airlines wherever possible, so that they can compete, without government subsidies, against big lines.

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