First Year Without a Death

In lonely outposts at Effingham, Ill. and Sexton Summit, Ore., in the busy, bright-lighted teletype room at Newark Airport, in hundreds of other stations along the Civil Aeronautics Authority's 30,000-mile wire circuit, the machines broke off their cabalistic sequence of weather symbols one morning last week. It was 3:50 a.m. E. S. T.

"NOTAM" (Notice to Airmen), they rapped out. "Heartiest congratulations to all . . . an entire year of air line safety . . . one of the outstanding achievements in the history of transportation. (Signed) Robert Hinckley, Chairman CAA. . . ." To 208 green-and-red-lit air liners then droning their way across the U. S.'s 35,900 miles of scheduled airways the message was relayed by radio. At breakfast after dawn passengers had copies, countersigned by their pilots, on their breakfast trays.

Next day United Air Lines came out in metropolitan newspapers with an advertisement air lines had never dared to use before: a specific, unequivocal brag for safety. Thus was celebrated the end of the first year in the history of any form of U. S. transport which had passed without a single fatality to passenger or crew.

>Fatalities 1937-38: 42.

> Fatalities 1938-39: 28.

> Fatalities 1939-40: 0.

> Significant fact: during 1939 air passenger traffic increased 32%, grew to more than 8% of Pullman business on a passenger-mile basis.

Not so auspicious was the prelude to the year-without-a-death. Braniff Airways (Chicago-Brownsville. Tex.), which for seven years had not had a passenger fatality, had just been awarded a certificate of Special Commendation by the National Safety Council when a Braniff plane crashed with a dead engine near Oklahoma City, killing seven passengers and a stewardess. A few days later, when stout, middle-aged Tom E. Braniff, president of the line, was receiving the certificate in Manhattan's Pennsylvania Hotel. CAA inspectors were probing through the blackened wreckage of the crash. The year ended in far less embarrassing fashion for Braniff. Last week Braniff Airways offered the public 150,000 shares of common stock at $10 a share. A third was sold from the personal holdings of Tom Braniff and he got the proceeds. The rest (about $817,000) will be used for new equipment: 21-passenger Douglas DC35s. The issue was well oversubscribed.

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