New Pilot for Northwest

While most U.S. airlines have been climbing, Northwest Airlines has just barely managed to hold its cruising altitude. In the industry, the talk had it that Northwest's problems were due to maintenance and pilot trouble, plus mounting costs and increased competition. But a group of Eastern investors who recently blocked a proposed merger of Northwest and Capital Airlines seemed to have a different idea. They apparently thought that what the line needed was a change in the operations office.

Croil Hunter, who joined Northwest in 1932 and rose to its presidency in five years, had sent Northwest climbing just as swiftly. He had boosted Northwest's routes from 1,000 to 20,000 miles, pushed it from coast to coast and out across the Pacific to the Far East.

Rough Air. But in the last few years Northwest has been hitting one patch of rough air after another. In 1950, potential passengers were not encouraged by a Northwest suit against Boeing for late delivery of ten Stratocruisers. Northwest claimed the planes had so many bugs in them that they had cost Northwest $6,000,000 to put them in flying shape (the suit was later withdrawn). Northwest had even more trouble in 1951, when its pilots refused to take Northwest's Martin 2025 aloft after five of them had crashed (TIME, April 23, 1951). The line had to ground 20 planes, then later sold them. With rented planes and Government contracts to fly the Pacific airlift, the line showed a profit in 1951. But in the first six months of this year, the airline lost $2,000,000.

Last week, with the approval of the New York stockholders, Hunter was moved up to chairman while Northwest got a new boss of operations. Into the presidency Jan. 1 will go "General Harold R. Harris, 56, Pan American's chief of Atlantic operations. An oldtime pilot, Harris' intimate knowledge of plane maintenance and line operation looked just like the thing Northwest needed.

New Equipment. A graduate of the California Institute of Technology and a World War 1 flyer, Hal Harris was made chief Army test pilot after the war. In 1922, when the wings of a plane he was flying dropped off in midair, he became the first Army pilot to parachute to safety from a disabled plane. Harris racked up 13 air records, test-piloted the first big U.S. bomber in 1922, the six-engine Barling. In 1926 he went to Peru, and flew crop-dusting planes, later became vice president and general manager of Peruvian Airways and from 1929-42 was operations manager of Panagra. Made a brigadier general in World War II, he bossed the training and domestic operations of the Air Transport Command, later managed operations for American Overseas Airlines until it merged with Pan Am in 1950. This week Airman Harris, a cautious man with airplanes, was just as cautious about his new job. Said he: "First I have to find out what the airline's all about. I'm going to break my neck trying to make it resume the position it used to have in this country. Something's wrong with the airline, I don't know what yet--except that they need new equipment."

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