Washday

When an airliner crashes, the airlines and manufacturers scramble to find out what happened and why, but they seldom accuse each other in public of laxity. They prefer to sweep the accident under the rug and out of sight. Last week Croil Hunter, boss of Northwest Airlines, took another course. His airline sued the Glenn L. Martin Co. for $725,000, charging that five Martin 2023 which it had bought in 1947-48 were defective. The wing of one of them, said Northwest, "tore off in flight," during a storm, killing 36 passengers and crewmen near Winona, Minn., last Aug. 29. Another 202 broke a wing spar the same day but landed safely.

Spars on all 2023 were later reinforced, and Hunter's line is still flying a fleet of 24. Both Martin and Northwest pooh-poohed the lawsuit, and Glenn Martin said it was just "a quarrel between insurance companies which doesn't affect us at all." But neither company stood to win a legal battle if it started passengers worrying all over again about the planes.

Last week, with the help of fat military contracts, Glenn L. Martin Co. got out of the red for the first time in two years (1948 loss: $16.7 million). President Martin told stockholders at the annual meeting that first-quarter profits were $402,643, contrasted with a net loss of $480,000 in the same quarter last year.

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