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Shall America's Aviation Set the Pace?

Address delivered by Colonel Edgar S. Gorrell, President of the Air Transport Association of America, before the National Petroleum Association, Clevland, Ohio, April 14, 1939.

   When the sun rose this morning early rising passengers of the air lines looked from their berths upon a sight almost beyond description.  On a floor of fleecy clouds the sun strode forth to ascend its saffron throne in a world of light and form and color unknown to those below.
   Such is the world of the air liner.  It is one of serene beauty and remote and awesome majesty which even the highest pinnacle of the earth cannot offer.  Yet the humblest citizen can enter into its fascinating precincts through the gateway of any airport.
   In making this latest contribution to the comfort and pleasure of mankind our progress has literally been amazing.
   In the past year alone, the safety of our performance was doubled.  And during the winter months just past our safety record was actually eight hundred and fifty-three per cent better than during the same months of a year ago -- which, in their turn, had been approximately one hundred per cent  better than the record for the same months of the year preceding.  During the past year the cost of air travel insurance was reduced, roughly speaking, by some seventy-five per cent.  Indeed, the necessarily hard-boiled insurance companies will now sell trip insurance to the air passenger -- no matter how often he flies -- at a rate which is approximately as favorable to the traveler as that charged for policies covering travel by rail and containing provisions which are in some respects even more favorable than those in the typical policy covering rail travel.
   The speed and range of our commercial air liners, so important both to the safety and to the convenience of the traveler, are being notably increased.
   Today America's air liners in regularly scheduled operation can perform at two hundred miles an hour, and our latest experimental model can fly a routine operation at two hundred and forty miles an hour.  Indeed, with some changes in design which we already know how to make, a type of plane which for over a year has been in general air line use can in the relatively near future be made without additional power output, to achieve a speed of nearly two hun-

Transcription Notes:
per cent is the British way of saying percent (both an abbreviation of 'per centum') I would be curious if the transcriber or author was English