Cat on the Carpet

"Wildcats" (unscheduled passenger lines) were digging their claws into the regular airlines. They were particularly sharp on the profitable New York-Los Angeles run. By last week a dozen wildcatters were hauling some 2,500 passengers weekly on the transcontinental run, grossing an estimated $10 million a year.

In one day's issue of the New York Daily News, ticket agencies representing the wildcats (for commissions as high as 20%) ran five different ads for cut-rate "air coach" flights to the West Coast. In Los Angeles, eight agencies were advertising. Prevailing rate: $99 plus tax (35% cheaper than the scheduled airlines' fare).

Chance to Purr. Earnings-wise, the regular airlines have had their worst twelve months in history. Yet, as the American Aviation Daily pointed out, "The combined losses of American, T.W.A. and United for the year 1947 would have been offset had [they carried] all of the passengers moving by nonsked carriers . . ."

The wildcats, who have been making money, plausibly retort that without the cheap "air coach" rates most of their passengers would have gone by train or bus. Said strapping (6 ft. 3 1/2 in.), cocksure Stan Weiss, president of wildcat Standard Air Lines: "The airlines are afraid of us, not because we are taking money away from them, but because the public and the Government now have something to measure them by."

Standard, the fattest of the dozen-odd transcontinental wildcats, started three years ago with just two converted C-47s and $90,000 of borrowed capital. Now it has eight DC-3s and $300,000 in assets, has never had a crackup. A fortnight ago Wildcatter Weiss got a chance to purr: because of a boycott of New York International (Idlewild) Airport by domestic airlines, the airport management hired Standard to fly Governor Thomas E. Dewey to Idlewild for the dedication ceremonies. Last week Weiss asked the Civil Aeronautics Board to certify Standard as a scheduled carrier, said frankly that he had been making scheduled flights (forbidden under his "irregular" registration) for the last five months.

Order to Suspend. CAB, which has let the wildcats pretty much alone, knows that the flying public likes bargain fares. It also knows that popular opinion favors competition. But CAB's mandate is to develop "a stable air transport system," and CAB knows that where the scheduled lines have to make their regular flights full or empty, and maintain many a money-losing run for "public necessity," the irregulars wait for full planeloads and raid only heavy-money runs.

That was why CAB last week ordered Wildcatter Weiss to suspend all operations, declared it would register no additional wildcat lines, ordered an investigation into all wildcat "practices and activities." Weiss, whose airline faces a death sentence if the CAB order sticks, went into court, and got a ten-day stay of execution. Without blocking a metaphor, he argued that the airlines were angry because wildcatters had "pulled the ground out from under them," added that he was "not going to be shouted out of business by [an] octopus."

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