Rice in the Sky

The world's shyest airline may well be Air America, which calls itself ";a private air carrier" and underlines its privacy by often flying unmarked air craft, by never advertising, and by refusing to discuss its operations. It has only one major customer: the U.S. Government. And, as anyone who has seen its silver planes around Viet Nam, Laos and Thailand might surmise, Air America is a special kind of enterprise. It is so special, in fact, that virtually everyone in Asia assumes it to be the child -- or first cousin -- of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Whoever thought the head man of so secretive an outfit would stand up and accept an award for running an airline under "extremely sensitive political conditions"? Yet there was George Doole Jr., Air America's managing director, smiling like a Rotarian and receiving a citation for the line's achievements from Washington's Aero Club at a luncheon in the capital last week. After the luncheon, Doole, a former Pan American Airways pilot, shrugged off newsmen's questions about his company's activities. "One wouldn't know," he said, if any particular contract was actually for the CIA. "If that were the case, they wouldn't tell me, would they?"

Admiral on Board. On paper, the airline, which was founded in China in 1946, belongs to the Pacific Corp., a Delaware holding company, whose board chairman is retired Admiral Felix Stump, former U.S. commander in chief in the Pacific. Air America's home office is in a Washington, D.C., building which is suspected of housing companies that operate with CIA backing.

Air America's field headquarters remains on Taiwan, where the company also runs a huge repair facility, which currently collects about $20 million yearly for repairs on U.S. aircraft from Viet Nam. Air America's total fleet numbers about 150, including little single-engined Helio Couriers and Pilatus Porters, which can land in 250 feet or less, a Super Constellation with peculiar humps on its fuselage, and Huey helicopters. Most of the repairs and ground work are handled by Air America's 9,000 Nationalist Chinese and Philippine employees. The line's 400-odd pilots are nearly all recruited from the U.S. military services, draw an average $18,000 in base pay, plus bonuses for hazardous flying conditions, which can raise the annual total to $25,000 or more. The flyers wear plain airline-type grey uniforms, stay mostly to themselves in special Air America clubs, and are tight-lipped about their missions. Says one Air America man: "So long as we get paid, we don't care what the customer puts in the back."

Decorations in Private. In some respects, Air America operates like a regular airline, providing scheduled service for the U.S. military between Okinawa. Japan and South Korea. But much of its work is strictly irregular. It was Air America pilots who dropped supplies to the French defenders of Dienbienphu before the stronghold fell in 1954. The company's next big assignment came two years later, when the U.S. moved to support the Laotian royalists in the Communist-inspired civil war. Thirty or so Air America planes dropped the rice and weapons that enabled royalist troops and Meo tribesmen to fight the Communist Pathet Lao to a standstill.

Though Laos has been relatively peaceful for the past two years, Air America has continued to drop hundreds of tons of rice to the displaced Meo tribesmen. Says one pilot: "There is a whole generation of Meos who are going to be damn surprised when someone tells them that rice doesn't grow in the sky."

Part of Air America's functions in Laos and Thailand have now been taken over by Continental Airlines, but Air America has stepped up its activities in Thailand, where it ferries supplies and ammunition to remote government outposts in the troublesome northeast. From Thailand, Air America also operates a helicopter rescue service that plucks downed U.S. flyers out of North Viet Nam and whisks them to safety. In South Viet Nam, Air America has become the aerial backbone of both the U.S. AID mission and the Vietnamese rural reconstruction program, ferrying as much as 6.2 million tons of cargo into isolated areas within a single month. At least 50 Air America air craft are regularly based at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport.

So far, Air America has lost to enemy action more than 20 aircraft and 50 flyers, including a pilot and copilot who were shot down last January in the Mekong Delta and then were executed by the Viet Cong. For Air America's men there still are no public awards. But for their heroism a number of Air America flyers have been awarded U.S. decorations in private ceremonies.

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