CAB About Face

Nobody expected it; few at first believed it. But from Washington last week came news that the Civil Aeronautics Board had abruptly abandoned its four-year-old "No" policy, had actually invited all comers to bid for air routes over the Caribbean. Said the Board in Docket No. 778: "Any person desiring to render air transportation in the (Caribbean) area, and having equipment and personnel to inaugurate service immediately, may file . . . application for a temporary certificate. . . ."

CAB has never done anything like this before. Veteran airline operators expect CAB to squash new route applications, not promote them. They had reason aplenty: under four years of CAB control, U.S. airlines asked for 42,973 miles of domestic routes, were granted only 7,421 miles. Mostly because of this tightfisted policy, the combined fleets of all 18 U.S. airlines actually declined from 386 planes in 1937 to 359 in 1941 (seating capacity, however, was increased). Atop this CAB clamped down still harder after Pearl Harbor, refused to okay any new route even if the airline could prove the need and could furnish the planes. One upshot: President Roosevelt had to intervene personally before American Airlines could get a permit for its new route to Mexico City (which CAB had turned down).

On last week's dramatic turnabout CAB was prudently mum. But aviation insiders suspected that 1) the mushroom growth of some foreign airlines had the U.S. worried, 2) the airline bottleneck southward out of Miami and Brownsville had become too tight for comfort.

CAB has already done something about the bottleneck--it has granted charter certificates galore to foreign-owned airlines. Thanks to the board, Dutch-owned K.L.M. flies between Miami, Curasao, Kingston and Havana; British West Indian Airways flies between Miami and Trinidad; Central America's TACA flies the Miami-Honduras-Costa Rica circuit. Yet at the very time CAB granted these certificates it sat tight on the Central American route applications of American Airlines, American Export Airlines and Pan American-Grace Airways.

This week most airline operators thought CAB was at last going in the right direction--the faster U.S. airlines can expand the better will be their chances in the airline-networked post-war world. But so far none has accepted CAB's latest invitation to operate over the Caribbean. The hitch: CAB's bid comes just when war has slashed commercial-airline equipment and personnel to the barest minimum.

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