Broken Record

"During the last four years, United has flown one billion, 600 million passenger miles without a single fatality. Even if we had an accident tonight, I would still believe that it is a good record."

Thus President William Allan Patterson of United Air Lines, honor guest at a private dinner party at Manhattan's University Club, proudly recalled last week the achievements for which his company had received two national safety awards in 1945.

That night United's flight No. 14, Denver-bound from Boise, Idaho, vanished into the stormy dark over Wyoming. Next day, search-plane pilots glimpsed a ragged gash in the snow near the 11,000-ft. summit of Wyoming's blizzard-swept Elk Mountain. For two days, ground parties fought 75-mile-an-hour winds to reach the peak. When they did, they found flight 14, scattered over a quarter mile of rock and ice. The dead: 21. The cause: unknown.

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