After You, Magellan

Every 15 'minutes a plane operated by the Army's indefatigable Air Transport Command lumbers free of the earth and begins a trans-Pacific flight. In one recent eight-day period these planes hauled 18.4 million lbs. of cargo over A.T.C.'s 42,000-mile Pacific airways. Passenger and cargo volume is three times that of a year ago.

These arresting facts stood out bright as airport beacons last week as 13 companies petitioned the Civil Aeronautics Board for a share of the postwar Pacific air routes. The principal contenders for future Pacific routes were already old hands at flying the ocean, under contract to A.T.C.

Since 1942, United Airlines and North west Airlines crews had flown schedule runs to New Caledonia, Alaska, Australia.

Today A.T.C. is doing much of the transport work with Army crews. But 70-odd crews from United Airlines were still on the job last week, most of them making the fast A.T.C. run to Guam.

United had chalked up over 14.6 million miles of flying over the Pacific. Northwest pilots boasted that they know more than the Eskimos do about Alaska and the dismal Bering Sea.

No Monopoly on Skill. As CAB hearings droned through their second week, Pan American Airways Corp., as usual, championed the idea of a single U.S.

overseas airline, filed its broad claims with this plan in mind. Pan Am traffic experts guesstimated that they would fly passengers from Los Angeles to Sydney in 32 hours (fare: $295); from San Fran cisco to Shanghai in 36 hours (fare: $303 ); from Seattle to Juneau in less than four hours (fare: $52).

In a carefully timed news release, Pan Am dazzled its competitors and prospective passengers by announcing that it had ordered a fleet of the new Consolidated Vultee 375, which are still in the design stage. These six-motored flying leviathans are planned to carry 204 passengers at speeds over 300 m.p.h., have a range, when fully loaded, of 4,200 miles.

But the other companies were undaunted by the grandeur of Pan Am's plans. United had previously argued persuasively for a line to Honolulu, which United's president, William A. Patterson, whimsically defined as nothing more than a 2,400-mile extension of his domestic trans continental route. They now asked for an Alaskan route in addition. T.W.A. plotted a fast route to the Orient (via the Northern Pacific) to complete its bid for a round-the-world route. North west bid for service to Alaska, and asked permission to use the bleak "over the top" route via Tokyo and the China coast to Manila.

Until the U.S. makes up its mind whether it wants monopoly, limited competition or free competition on its overseas air routes, the final assignment of routes will be a difficult decision for CAB to make. But one point was clearing up. Pan Am no longer could claim a monopoly on the "know-how" of overseas flying. Since Pearl Harbor too many of Pan Am's competitors had learned, the hard way, how to navigate the ocean's airways.

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