Democracy in the Air

As every airplane traveler ""grumbles. first class is barely worth the money. The extras he is offered--a couple of free drinks, a slightly more elegant meal, a bit more leg room, a bigger choice of periodicals and. with luck, a movie he hasn't yet seen--are apt to cost him a third more than the regular coach fare, get him to his destination no more quickly than the people sitting in the less prestigious rows behind him. So complained United Air Lines President William A. Patterson in a speech last week to the Passenger Traffic Association of New York, in which he urged the airline industry to adopt a single class of passenger service; for both economy and safety.

By cutting first-class frills. Patterson claims, airlines could provide coast-to-coast service on a one-class basis at fares only $10 over present coach rates. Coach sections, he declared, are often overcrowded beyond the safety limit for emergency evacuation. Sixteen coach passengers were suffocated, apparently waiting their turn to get out of a United plane, intact but burning, that crashed last year.

Airline presidents, he said, would do well to ask themselves whether they are fulfilling their moral obligations. "My conscience is not clear on the seating configuration of airplanes." said Patterson. "But I intend to make it my business, so that when I retire in two years" I can do so with a clear conscience."

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