The Friendlier Skies

Twentieth century travelers have been struck by a number of things: oncoming cars, other airplanes, mountainsides --and sometimes the vaguely subversive thought that they are scarcely safer now than were 19th century men who took their chances in wagons across Indian country. There might be some intimation of progress in the fact that last week's Trans Caribbean Boeing 727 crash on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, in which two passengers died and 54 were injured, was the first and only fatal crash of American scheduled airlines in all of 1970. So superb a safety record suggests that something much closer to complete safety in the air may not be impossible. But as the still-grieving campuses of Marshall University and Wichita State University attest, it was a disastrously imperfect year for nonscheduled charter flights.

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