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SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS 25

will be a key factor in determining the course of history and in preserving our own freedom. Aviation can be a tremendous catalyst in accelerating that progress, and our own aviation resources can make a most important contribution. 
  The ability to move people and goods is essential to any significant economic and social activity. In more advanced economies this essential function was first performed by surface transportation and has now been replaced in some respected by aviation. However, in most areas that now are developing rapidly, aviation has a somewhat different role to play. There are basic reasons for this. Aviation is more easily and quickly developed than either highway or rail transportation, both of which require more time and more capital investment; both passenger and cargo traffic now, and for some time to come, are too thin to justify investment in mass transportation facilities but may justify investment in aviation with its great inherent flexibility; the newly developing countries need to make their scarce human resources available in widely separated areas and with the least possible waste of time - an opportunity which only aviation can provide. 
  Although aviation cannot do the entire job, its greater flexibility and speed make it peculiarly valuable for varied tasks in developing areas. Certain specific benefits which may be emphasized are: Contributing to economic and social integration of dispersed and disparate communities by improved passenger service; improving health care and education and spurring industrial development and production through aircargo transportation; simplifying the survey of mineral exploration, construction of powerlines and communications facilities, crop dusting, disease control, and other essential tasks, through the utilization of utility aircraft. 
  Although our national interest in the aviation activities of developing areas may not have been recognized early enough or widely enough, the United States has already contributed greatly to the development of aviation in many of these countries. This has been true in Latin America, where the U.S. international airlines built airfields, installed navigation and communications equipment, and established air traffic control and landing systems where none had existed.