CAB Goes West

The big scramble for postwar interstate air routes began last week in Denver. A score of Westerners, loaded with maps, plans, briefs and economic charts, appeared before a territorial Civil Aeronautics Board hearing. Each stood ready to prove that CAB should give him a certificate to operate a local "feeder" airline, to pick up back-country passengers and deliver them to the big airports where the transcontinental airliners stop, or to save them travel-time by hopping them for short distances.

Feeder-line operation is an undeveloped field in the U.S. airline business. To keep it under control CAB wants to license only as many routes as the traffic will bear. In Colorado CAB must decide between applicants representing every shade of free enterprise, from well-heeled air lines to weathery, leathery extrovert ad venturers with shoestring capital. If licenses were granted to all, the West would be cobwebbed with airlines covering 190 cities.

Fat Little Routes. The main fight for the potentially fat little interstate routes is between the big established companies and the small independent operators. Big Western Air Lines -- already sparring with United, TWA and Continental for the juicy Denver-Los Angeles run -- popped up in Denver last week to tell CAB it also wanted to operate feeders. Along came Frontier Airways, Inc. to say it should be the one to cloverleaf the Denver area with feeders. It had no planes, no pilots and no experience, but it had $100,000 in subscribed stock, and was backed by big Braniff Airways (TIME, Aug. 21). The small independent operators argued that if the big lines got the local feeder business, free competition would be thrown to the wolves of monopoly. The big lines cracked back that aviation as a whole would benefit only if feeder companies were run by sound business organizations.

But some of the small operators had solid though one-horse experience to back up their claims that they were up to the job. Within Colorado, over the American Hump, four shoestring companies this summer have successfully pioneered in operating feeders. None has had a serious accident.

Thin High Air. Like the barnstormers of the 1920s, their pilots have been flying light single-engined planes, edging them over the Hump by instinct and seat-of-the-pants navigation. Toughest route is that flown by Mountain States Aviation, Inc., whose one single-engined Beechcraft biplane has been successfully making the 286-mile loop from Denver through northwestern Colorado since July 24. On each trip it must fly through five mountain passes higher than 9,000 feet (highest: Corona Pass, 11,680 ft.). Other lines now operating are Massey & Ransom, and the Pueblo Air Services. Colorado Airlines, Inc. operated for three months this spring, has been discontinued because, like the rest of the lines, it lost money. But it is sure the line would be profitable with bigger and better planes.

After the three-week hearing in Denver, CAB will study the evidence in detail. Who gets the certificates will not be decided for several months. Meanwhile, the hundreds of intrastate flights, authorized only by Colorado statute, will go on, scrambling from updraft to updraft over the jagged Rockies.

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