(3 of 4)
Senator William Edgar Borah, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a great Soviet protagonist, acted more directly. Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, onetime Assistant Attorney-General, now Washington attorney for The Aviation Corp. which owns Alaskan Airways, begged him to intercede. He cabled to Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, Soviet Commissar for Foreign Affairs at Moscow. At once the Russians, eager to repeat their glory of rescuing the wrecked Italia crew, ordered out three planes stationed within flying distance of Eielson's disappearance. They also telegraphed and radioed Siberian outposts to send out sledge parties.*
Travel Booster
How can transport operators boost air travel at this season, when traffic is desperately light and expensive planes must keep schedules? Universal Aviation Corp. last week sought to kill the trouble by offering $250 mileage books from which Universal's air conductors will tear fares exactly equal to railroad fare plus Pullman charges between any two points served. Thus: Kansas City to Chicago regular air rate is $45.75; the railroad-pullman rate, and hence the Universal mileage scrip rate, $21.03. Anyone can buy and use the books —doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.
South American Race
The two competitive U. S. racers for South American air transportation are Pan-American Airways and New York, Rio and Buenos Aires Line. The latter, of which onetime Assistant Secretary of Commerce William Patterson MacCracken is now board chairman, last week had most of its planes and pilots at their stations alert to start their service between Manhattan and Buenos Aires.
Meantime, Pan-American was busy. It opened its air-rail from U. S. points, by way of Miami, to Latin-American countries. It cut its airmail rates from the U. S. to the South American west coast, and therefrom across the Andes to the Argentine. From cheaper rates, it expected more business. For goodwill, it arranged to carry a load of U. S. doctors to inspect northern South American districts when the Pan-American Medical Association meets in Panama City the end of this month. It ordered from Designer-Manufacturer Igor Sikorsky two of the largest amphibians yet made. These ships will have four motors, a total of 2,300 h. p., to carry 40 passengers and a useful load of six tons additional. Also, Pan-American sent a ship to survey the South American east coast, along which it will extend its competition with NYRBA.
Flights & Flyers
At the Moulmein Pagoda. A steady drone of power changed suddenly to a stutter of uncertainty, then stopped. Joseph Marie Le Brix and M. Rossi on a flight from Paris to Saigon, Cochin-China, last week, scrambled to undo safety belts, climbed over their cockpit's edge and stepped, parachutes unfolding, into the black darkness over the mountains near Moulmein, Burma. The old Moulmein pagoda heard the shriek of wind against wires as the Frenchmen's plane roared to the ground with no one in control. The plane was demolished, mail was lost, Rossi fractured his pelvic bone, the hopes of Le Brix to outdo ''Doudou" Costes, who preëmpted the kudos of their 1928 world flight and thereby created a personal enmity, were shattered.