Above the Battle

Scanning from the left seat, Pilot Pat Evans spotted a brilliant flash on a hilltop 7,900 feet below. A pair of fighter planes wheeled in, tossing bombs into the jungle. Then a string of helicopters settled to earth and squads of infantrymen leaped from them, firing as they ran. Evans shrugged. "They are fighting like hell down there," he said, "and for us it is business as usual."

It may be business as usual for any one of the 40 other pilots of Saigon-based Continental Air Services, but the business itself is most unusual. CAS, a subsidiary of the U.S.'s Continental Air Lines, operates in Viet Nam, Laos and Thailand, and has become the prime commercial charter carrier in an area where ground travel is usually difficult and often impossible. In Viet Nam, which is home for half of its 50-plane fleet, CAS links dozens of airstrips from the DMZ to the Mekong Delta. Each month it carries 20,000 passengers and some 1,300,000 lbs. of cargo. Its customers, mainly U.S. contractors in Viet Nam, do not demand much in the way of frills. "Here you keep up your image by keeping your planes flying," says CAS Administrative Manager Jim Eckes, 33. "You get down to essentials."

The essentials can be tough enough. A CAS plane was one of the last to leave the Citadel at Hue when North Vietnamese regulars stormed in. Another dropped in at Khe Sanh during the height of the siege to evacuate two wounded newsmen. Even in ordinary operations, CAS pilots, most of whom are ex-military aviators, more than earn their average tax-free pay of $2,000 a month. Often their "airstrips" are barely that--for example, at Nui Sap the strip is a 60-ft.-wide dike top that stretches for 960 ft. between two paddyfields. There are V.C. potshotters on the ground, swarms of U.S. fighters, transports, helicopters and spotter planes in the air. "Our major hazard," complains Chief Pilot Ed Dearborn, "is overcrowded airways, not the enemy." So far, the CAS has lost only one plane, a small Beechcraft that crashed while landing in the prop wash of a big transport.

Los Angeles-based Continental Air Lines, which has been encouraged by the U.S. in its efforts to set up a reliable air service in Southeast Asia, started CAS in 1965 by taking over a small U.S.-owned, Laotian-based "air-taxi" service. Its Laotian business was (and through CAS, still is) run in close cooperation with Air America, the less than secret CIA-sponsored outfit.

Continental's really important work has come in Viet Nam. It won Saigon's permission to take contracts from RMK-BRJ, the big U.S. construction combine, and other U.S. firms, agreeing in return to pay a royalty to Air Viet Nam, the understaffed government airline that has a nominal monopoly on Vietnamese commercial air travel. Having assembled a motley but eminently suitable short-haul fleet led by eight vintage C-47 transports, CAS expects to take in at least $9,000,000 this year and make its first annual profit.

Deft Maneuvers. Flamboyant Robert Six, Continental Air Lines' 61-year-old president, is after much larger dividends. Asia holds a tremendous fascination for him, which is traceable only in part to the fact that his third wife, Actress Audrey Meadows, was born in China. Six sees a big future in Asia and wants to make sure that Continental, the eleventh-ranked U.S. carrier, gets a share of it. Continental has based its plans to become a major international airline on winning some of the new air routes to be handed out under the expansion of trans-Pacific service now being considered by Washington. Continental received no routes from the Civil Aeronautics Board examiner who made the preliminary recommendations last April. The airline now pins its hopes on the President, who has the final say.

Meanwhile, back in Saigon, CAS has been performing some deft maneuvers to ensure its own future. In September, it signed an agreement to form with Air Viet Nam a yet unnamed airline that will handle all Vietnamese contract and charter air business. CAS, whose 50% share in the new venture assures it a reasonably secure future in Viet Nam, will initially operate the airline. "De-Americanization" of the war promises to be even more lucrative. CAS might well inherit military air transport chores that could increase the line's business tenfold.

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