The fog of deficits that has shrouded airlines' operations for two years showed signs of lifting last week. The Air Transport Association in its annual report exuberantly called attention to the clearing weather. Last year, said ATA, had been one of the safest on record: only 1.41 fatalities (down from 3.2 in 1947) for every 100 million passenger miles flown.
Thanks partly to a boost of nearly 50% in freight & express business, finances had improved even more. ATA estimated that U.S. scheduled airlines would show a 1948 loss of only $6,735,000, as compared with $21.8 million the previous year. And, it added, if the mail-pay boosts which many lines recently got were counted in, the 1948 operating deficit might be practically wiped out.
Time Wasters. This did not mean that blue skies were just ahead. On the all-important point of selling air travel to the public, the airlines still had a long way to fly.
The number of revenue passenger miles flown had actually dropped 1.3% in 1948 (to 7.76 billion). This was due partly to the grounding of the DC-6s and the National Airlines strike, but it was also due to the fact that passengers still found too many things wrong with the airlines.
Though airlines plugged air travel as a great timesaver, they were still wasting too much of their passengers' time. In many cases plane riders were still required to "check in" long before plane time, and their baggage was still handled slowly and carelessly. Recently a passenger flew the 802 miles from Atlanta to Newark in 2 hours 35 minutes. Then it took him almost as long to get his luggage and ride the airlines limousine into New York (45 minutes for the luggage wait, one hour and 40 minutes in the limousine).
Smaller irritations rubbed passengers sore. Airlines still call ticket holders, frequently out of their sleep, to "alert" them with a dubious report that their plane will leave six hours later. They put off announcements of flight cancellations until passengers have missed trains; they change timetables abruptly and often (in the case of one airline, on an average of every two weeks). One big trouble was that while pilots and mechanics were highly paid, airline clerks—from whom the public gets most of its impressions and information —were low-paid.
Trouble Curers. To the credit of the airlines, they were aware of much of what was wrong—and how to set it right. (TWA recently distributed an Operations Plan Guide which needles employees with cartoons of most complaints.) At many airports, airlines have set up railroad-style bulletin boards so that travelers can tell at a glance the source, destination and timing of all flights. In Denver, Continental and Braniff have combined information and ticket services to cut red tape and costs. Constellations and the new Convair liners have racks which allow passengers to keep small luggage within arm's reach.
More important, U.S. airlines, thanks to the installation of I.L.S. (Instrument Landing System) at 79 airports, were completing many more of their scheduled flights—and on time. At New York City's La Guardia Field, for example, instrument landings in bad weather in December reached a total of 978; of that number, 257 were late, but the delay averaged only 10½ minutes.