Flying Down to Rio

Smart, suave Juan Terry Trippe last week stirred the aviation industry with exciting news. Out of the hangar he wheeled Pan American Airways' grandiose postwar plans. Come war's end--and Civil Aeronautics Board approval--Pan Am plans to spend some $52,000,000 to expand its Latin American routes. And Juan Trippe stirred the earth-bound citizenry with news: Pan Am expects to slash flying time from the U.S. to Latin America by approximately two-thirds and will cut fares even below the present steamship rates. Examples: the fare from Manhattan to Rio de Janeiro will be reduced from $491.35 to $175; Manhattan to Buenos Aires from $561.35 to $190.50; Los Angeles to Buenos Aires from $670 to $227.

To back up this tall talk, Pan Am has already: 1) asked CAB for permission to fly south from Manhattan; 2) ordered 108-passenger, 300-mile-an-hour land ships to do the job. Who had contracts for the planes, Pan Am Boss Trippe did not say: Pan Am had 57 super planes on order from Douglas and Lockheed when World War II stopped delivery.

What Juan Trippe proposed was not only a revolution in speed and comfort in airline travel, but also a revolution in airline thinking. Hitherto airlines have cautiously added planes only when forced into it by increasing business. Trippe plans to get the equipment first and then drum up the business. Eventually he expects to shave passenger fares to 3 1/2-c- a mile (current average: 8 3/4-c-) and thus tap the probably enormous "See South America in Two Weeks" vacation market. He expects to drop average cargo rates to 25.4-c- per ton mile (current rate: 80-c-).

Other airline operators, as usual, were less optimistic. Privately they groused that Pan Am's plans were a "pipe dream," that the rates were much too low. They pointed out that CAB opens hearings Sept. 18 on applications of some dozen other U.S. airlines and steamship lines for Latin American routes to cut into Pan Am's virtual monopoly; that Operator Trippe may be merely trying to choke them off before the hearings even start.

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