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The Air Line Industry Today By Edgar S. Gorrell, President Air Transport Association of America From all indications the air lines operating within the United States will do a business in 1937 amounting to $40,000,000. This gross business is creditable, but it has cost air lines an increased amount of money to get it. Labor costs have increased over 20%, while material costs have gone up 29%. On the other hand, passenger fares have not increased. More than one line has been forced to spend an increased amount of money for safety aids. When the railroads lowered passenger rates and put on air-conditioned cars and streamliners, it was necessary for the air lines to place in service more luxurious equipment. The air line business is still a small industry. Last year the gross revenues of all of the domestic operators was less than $37,000,000, which is about one-tenth of the gross revenue of Montgomery Ward, which does not happen to be the largest in its particular field. One of the railroads, out of the 144 Class I railroads in the United States, grossed about three times as much as all of the air lines combined. The public often loses sight of the fact that, although the air lines are important to the business and social life of the country as well as to national defense, they are still a small business. In fact, the model airplane industry is believed to exceed the dollar business volume of the air lines. The Air Transport Industry Today What is the air transport industry today? We have 370 airplanes and about 10,000 employees, twenty-six employees to every ship. Seven hundred are first pilots and 550 are co-pilots. We have 3,700 office employees, 2,700 mechanics, 387 stewardesses, 103 stewards, and 1,750 hangar and field personnel. The class I railroads have over 1,000,000 employees contrasted to our 10,000. I learned from an insurance man the other day an interesting statistic which he assures me is correct in every way from an actuarial standpoint. Actuaries cannot be fooled. I am told that life insurance companies count on five men at the age of thirty-five, out of every 1,000 at that age, to meet with violent death or die in bed of cirrhosis of the liver or some other cause. In 1936, a bad year for us, 46 people met with fatalities, on all of the United States air lines, including Pan American, while 1,150,000 passengers were carried. Compare the ratio of forty-six to 1,150,000 and the five to 1,000 ratio of the life insurance companies. Our ratio would be 100 times better than the normal chances of mortality while walking around the streets or reclining on the living room sofa. The National Safety Council recently put out some statistics on automobile fatalities. The rate in Chicago is pretty terrible, 196 1
