Safety v. Payload

David Louis Behncke, mild-looking, 210-lb. president of the Air Line Pilots' Association, last week was waging a stubborn war with the Civil Aeronautics Board in his favorite cause: pilots' safety. Since the airlines cannot expect to get any new planes this year, and are operating their skeleton fleet of 175 ships an average of 11.5 hours a day, the most obvious way to meet the enormous demand for air transportation is to boost the load each plane is licensed to carry. CAB has proposed to increase the Douglas DC-3 take-off weight limit of 25,200 Ib. by 1,000 Ib. and the 24,400-lb. landing weight by 800 Ib.

Behncke protests that cramming 1,000 Ib. of added payload into commercial planes, most of which are five or six years old, would be highly risky for pilots and passengers. CAB engineers have made exhaustive test flights in DC-3s loaded to the higher weight limits, and the Air Transport Command calmly loads its DC-35 up to 29,000 Ib. for military flights. But Dave Behncke is unconvinced. "What I'm thinking of," he argues, "is the cushion of safety which the pilot must have to land safely if something goes wrong while in flight, and that cushion of safety is narrowed too much with these new weights."

An added 1,000 Ib. per plane would not solve the airlines' wartime traffic problem. Only more planes can do that. But the Behncke-CAB row marks a milestone in air transport labor relations. Ever since 1934, when Behncke was an airmail pilot on the Chicago-Omaha run and was forced by bad weather to pancake his plane into a treetop, he has doggedly campaigned for greater safety in flying. Unhurt in the crash, he toppled ignobly to the ground while getting out of his wrecked ship, broke his leg, quit flying. Since its beginning in 1931 he has headed the A.L.P.A. (4,500 members), which he helped found. Reasonable in his dealings with management, Behncke has been unrelentingly stubborn about safety measures.

The issue now is: Will CAB or Dave Behncke write the laws regulating the safe and efficient operations of commercial air transports?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.