The Progress of Cross-Country Flying

Its Pleasures, Advantages and Development in This Country

GEORGE W. SUTTON, Jr.

CROSS-COUNTRY flying resolves itself into three easily recognizable 'factors. It is impossible to talk about this subject without segregating the parts and knowing what they are.:, so let's do it now, like this, placing them in the reverse order of their present importance:

1—Pleasure cross-country flying.

Including flying for convenience.

2—Commercial cross-country flying.

Including passenger, freight and mail carrying and police work, and so forth.

3—Governmental cross-country flying.

Including military, naval, forest protection, coast patrol and experimental flying.

If you own a 'plane, you know it is not feasible to jump into it and start right out on a trip. You must have a definite starting point and a very definite landing place. Approximately two hundred cities throughout the United States have established landing fields,—some good, some bad. Granting that you have a suitable starting place you must know, before you take off, just where the landing fields are on the route you' intend to follow, just what they are

like and what facilities they offer for refilling and possible replacement of parts. With this simple but vital precaution attended to there is no reason why anybody with the desire, the money and the necessary Government license cannot take part in this sport which is growing slowly, but surely and permanently.

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Airplanes for Convenience

HP HERE are today perhaps a hundred people in the United States who own airplanes and use. them purely for convenience or pleasure. Before winter sets in this number will have increased to somewhere between two hundred and three hundred, judging from orders now being completed by some of the big companies.

How do these people employ their planes? Well, in a variety of ways. Two New York business men, Inglis M. Uppercu, President of the Cadillac Motor Car Company of New York, who lives in New Jersey, and Roy U. Conger, an airplane manufacturer, whose home is at Westhampton, Long Island, commute daily in their airplanes. Mr. Uppercu uses an Aeromarine flying boat, and lands in the Hudson River near 86th Street, while Mr. Conger has a land airplane, and alights at the Sheepshead Bay motordrome. Both continue the trip to their offices by motor car.

From both Pacific and Atlantic coasts there come reports of people who have gone fishing in their seaplanes. This is perfectly practical and enjoyable, and considerably less trouble than going fishing by boat. In England they are planning to use airplanes to locate shoals of fish in the ocean. This idea will not take long to become established in our own fishing fleet.

Some wise person has written that when people are happy there is not much to be written about them. This is true of the people who fly for pleasure. It is getting to be a common sight around our more crowded centres of population to see airplanes dipping through the skies, in fact, so common that children at play in the streets do not give the humming aircraft more than a passing glance. Recently a gentleman living in Brooklyn took his four-year-old daughter for a flight at an altitude of about half a mile. Apparently the little girl did not have one moment of fright but enjoyed the experience hugely, her only regret being that the aviator. did not put the ship through a few loops. Quite similar was the experience of the two little daughters of General William Mitchell, of the Army Air Service. The children made a trip of about twenty miles in a seaplane. The younger of the two is nine years old.

The growth of sporting aviation in the United States is bound to be slow, but it is also bound to arrive eventually. The main deterrents at present are the lack of money and flying facilities of those young men who have been in the Air Service and have already done considerable flying, the lack of knowledge on the part of those sportsmen who could well afford it, as to the real benefits and enjoyment of this new sport and the inadequate number and quality of flying fields throughout the country.

Commercial Flying

OMMERCIAL flying in the United States is already an accomplished fact and is making considerable progress, although still far behind the development in Europe. Part of the. blame for this can be laid to a lack of policy in Washington to supply hundreds of already experienced flyers with the means of flying. Of the great quantity of 'planes delivered to the Government during th war a few have been bought back by one of the biggest companies in the industry. But there are many other thousands of serviceable 'planes remaining in storage at the aviation fields which would make excellent vehicles for commercial purposes, although not suitable for use in battle. Many of our aviation fields have been closed, due to the lack of interest in the Air Service by Secretary Baker, Congress and the General Staff. As you know, there is a movement on foot to take the Air Service away from the Army and organize it as a separate and distinct branch, with a Cabinet member at its head. This may be the reason for the antagonism shown in high places, because as a separate branch of service the Aviation Department would be less amenable to the plans and politits of the General Staff. The agitation for a separate and distinct Air Service is receiving its greatest impulse from the expert aviation mission which went to Europe to study conditions there. This body, headed by Assistant Secretary of War Crowell, made a report on European activities and a recommendation that we have a separate air branch of the Government, which was so simple and so convincing that it apparently created consternation in the ranks of the opponents of the Air Service. Perhaps this is why Mr. Baker appointed four artillery officers and one officer of the Air Service who was known to be against the establishment of the Air Service as a separate branch, as a committee to pick flaws in the Crowell report which had been submitted.

The establishment of a worthy flying club in every sizable city, in connection with an efficiently maintained municipal flying field, seems to be one of the solutions of the flying problem. Such action has taken place in Cleveland, Ohio, where ISO expert war-trained pilots have banded together into the Cleveland Aviation Club, under the leadership of ex-Major A. W. Harris. These men want to fly and they are willing to fly for their country in case of trouble. But naturally they lack the funds and equipment necessary to the attainment of their ambition. Therefore, a committee went to Washington to find out what could be done. General Mitchell, of the Air Service, immediately designated the Cleveland Club as the first Aerial Reserve Unit in the United States, at the same time announcing that other organizations similarly made up would be encouraged in the same manner by the Air Service. A proposal was laid before General Mitchell to issue to the club some of the 'planes lying idle in storage, 'planes which are deteriorating rapidly through not being used. No definite promises were made, except the promise to try to bring this about. If it can be done with the Cleveland Club and with others of similar nature we need not worry about the personnel for our future air service for some little time. The Government has invested from $19,000 to $25,000 in each of these pilots, and it would seem a common-sense safeguard of the investment to extend to these men the opportunity of keeping in practice.

Flying Fields

TN the matter of flying fields, twentythree cities throughout the State of Ohio have established excellent airdromes of various kinds, so that it is possible today to fly all over that middle western State and always be sure of a proper place to land. With the extension of this progressive development in all the other States of the Union and encouragement from the Government in the way of recognition and the issue of equipment to authorize organizations of flyers, the solution of the private pleasure and reserve military flying will be met. I have yet to see the first word indicating that it might be a good thing for the National Guard organizations of the various States to include aviation in their programs. This is something which will undoubtedly command a certain amount of attention in due time.

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When we come to the study of commercial flying in this country we discover that while a great deal has already been done, other countries are considerably ahead of us in this respect. But there is a great deal of commercial flying here and it is following a large number of diversified lines, the most successful of which so far has been the mail service. It is not too early to look forward to the time when aerial passenger and freight carrying lines will be a formidable antagonist of the railroads. In fact, the railroads already see the handwriting on the wall, and are beginning to fight the aerial mail service. The reason of this is easy ter find. Within one year on the route between Cleveland and Chicago, the Government has discontinued the use of one sixty-foot distributing mail car, thereby saving the Government $52,000 on that run alone. Second Assistant Postmaster-General Praeger has made the statement that when he gets the fourteen big mail carrying 'planes which are now being built, in operation between New York and Chicago, it will save the Government $1,500,000 a year. These 'planes are of the Martin-Bomber type. Six of them, to carry 2,000 pounds each, are being made by the Glenn L. Martin Company, four of the same size by the Thomas Morse Company, and four others, to carry 3,000 pounds each, by the L. W. F. Engineering Company. No wonder the railroads are beginning to put on their armor.

In all parts of the country aerial taxi lines are springing up. Their success will depend on the service they are able to render and the cheapness with which they can operate. Already this idea is well developed in Europe, and passenger and freight lines are in daily service between most of the big continental cities.

Traffic Regulation

A MATTER of extreme importance to all kinds of aviation in this country now is the need of Federal regulation of air traffic. Already ignorant lawmakers in various States are proposing legislation which will hamper our development of flying, if allowed to run wild. For instance, the Gallaudet Flying School near East Greenwich, Rhode Island, was informed recently by the village constable that its pilots could no longer fly over that part of the country, because the drivers of vehicles on the road stopped to watch the machines in the air, thereby blocking traffic. He offered to extend a village license to each flyer for a certain amount of money, but the directors of the school were too wise to enter into this arrangement. They finally compromised on the issuance to the school of an "entertainment license", at a cost of ten dollars a day. This is a fair sample of what is being done in this direction in other parts of the country.

To sum up a subject about which a large volume could be written, it might be said that the culmination of 'cross country flying in this country has been in the governmental path-finding trip around the United States, and. in the New York-Toronto Aerial Derby. These two events have shown that there is a tremendous fundamental interest in flying on the part of the public, which needs only more action and less talk to crystalize into actual aerial progress.