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BOSTON EVENING TRANSCRIPT, MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1936
Flyers and Flying
Colonel Gorrell on Policy, Safety Progress and Airport Traffic Problem--Burden on Control Tower Men--
Ray Todd a Visitor
By Hamilton Thornquist
(This Department Appears in Each Monday's Transcript)
Colonel Edgar S. Gorrell, president of the Air Transport Association of America, spoke on "Current Trends in Aviation" today at the national conference on transportation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
Colonel Gorrell's request for "a more definite Governmental policy as regards the air transport industry" receives the backing of the majority of thinking air line men. His reference to Congressional investigations of the aviation industry--which he points out have averaged one a year since 1919--also will be appreciated. 
The colonel's statement that the airplane soon will be the only vehicle of transportation that can reach its destination on schedule under all conditions of weather is perhaps the one most startling to the general public. His reference to trains cut off by floods and snowfall allows airmen a sense of satisfaction while they face the problems of boosting the safety average. He remarked that European airlines, highly subsidized, are but one-tenth as safe as all United States air lines in the aggregate, and asserts that air travel already was more than twice as safe as cross-country travel by private motor car.
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PROGRESS--Colonel Gorrell's statements on the progress of the industry are backed up in one line of thought by the fact that air travel has increased so fast that depots have been left far behind in the development. It has paralleled the progress of the automobile industry where a car in every garage and high speed highways have brought in influx of machines into cities with which traffic officials cannot contend efficiently. 
One of the most serious problems the airplane industry must meet is the subject of air traffic control, which Jerome Lederer, of the engineering department of Aero Insurance Underwriters, writes "seems at the present time to be without solution." One suggestion that seems a step toward solution is the colonel's remark that scheduled air liners should have separate landing fields. 
While the airplane industry and the Department of Commerce strive for more efficient traffic control, a disturbing thought is raised by one Boston pilot, who asks: "When dozens of ships are coming into a field constantly--all directed by the men in the field's control tower--what are you going to do when you reach the maximum point of efficiency of these control men?"
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VISITOR--Ray Todd, formerly with Amesbury Skyways and attached to the Army Reserve here, landed in Boston Saturday from Selfridge  Field, Mich., where he is on active duty with the Army. Todd left for the return trip yesterday afternoon and thrilled Sunday visitors at the airport with an Immelmann and a slow roll in his Boeing P-26 before he straightened off on the western course. 
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FALLING FILLINGS--Under investigation at Wright Field is the effect of oxygen on the teeth of pilots at high altitudes. Flyers who have gone to great altitudes have complained that their teeth break off and fillings drop out after flights on which oxygen is used. 
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PROFIT IN FIRSTS - Evidence of the rapid growth of air transportation in the past year, both of freight and passengers, is illustrated by an announcement of Railway Express Agency, which reports revenue for April, 1936, showed an 85 per cent gain over that of the agency's contract airlines for April of last year.
C.D. Summy, vice president of the corporation, traces a large part of the increase to gifts of every description sent various celebrities, of which he lists as the first in rank President Roosevelt, King Edward VIII of England and Shirley  Temple. 
The agency benefits in shipments to these three notables of first crops, first hatches, first born, first cherries, walnuts, pecans, beans, turkeys, puppies and fish. King Edward receives the first salmon and grouse of the season. The speed and picturesqueness of air express lure the donors into sending the gifts by plane.
The transport of plants, flowers and fruit by air is given a touch of romance by an experiment recently made by England's Imperial Airways. A party of travelers, sitting down to a meal on the fringe of an African desert, saw before them in a glass bowl a refreshing bunch of flowers which, only a few days before, had been picked in a garden in far-off England. Fresh mangoes from Egypt and rare bloom of the East may be seen in London shops, air-borne from their native climes.
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FASTER--Co-operating with American Air Lines, United has announced faster passenger service from Boston to Chicago via Newark and Cleveland. Elapsed time from Boston to Chicago is cut to seven hours on two trips, with comparable reductions on four other trips daily. Flying time from Boston to Cleveland is reduced to four and one half hours.
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BUSIER--Signs of prosperity are reported from the East Boston Airport. Inter-City Airlines points to a total of 519 hours in the air during May, exclusive of hangar flying, the highest since 1929. John H. Shobe predicts 500 new student pilots will learn to fly in New England during 1936 and says twenty new students have enrolled for flight instruction by his pilots. Alfred R. Leckscheid, former air mail pilot in charge of instruction at Shobe Airlines hangar, has taught more than 200 students to fly during his career. Among his new pupils are James Breathitt, III, of Cambridge; Miss Constance Sheridan of Boston; Miss Elizabeth D. Farley of Needham; Stuart M. Burroughs of Belmont; and Allan Langenheim of Brookline. During last week, Shobe's planes carried 209 passengers in one day--a record--he reports. 
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COMMENDED--By special order of Major Clarence E. Hodge and Captain Edward S. Beck, Second Lieutenant Francis P. Kendall, pilot, and Technical Sergeant Laurence W. Murray, observer, were commended at the weekly drill of the Massachusetts National Guard last Friday for their alertness in observing two children in danger of drowning in a capsized boat in Boston harbor recently. 
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CAPE COD--Guy A. Ham. Jr., head of Cape Cod Seaplanes, has opened his annual service at Coonamessett Lake, Falmouth. On Tuesday he left for a seaplane tour of eastern Canada. 
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