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are in the middle of the greater equipment program of all - the "jet revolution" - a three-and-one-half billion dollar investment in better service.
  They have taken an aggressive leadership in safety so that you are now much safer on an airliner than you are in your family car.
  Cities served and flight schedules have mushroomed, so today air service is a universal thing in America. And in just the past 10 years, nonstop and limited-stop schedules have increased 20 per cent.
  Despite these vast improvements in public service, the airline fare level has advanced but a few percentage points since 1938, while the cost of everything else we buy has skyrocketed an average of 100 percent or more.
  As a result of these dramatic gains in service, air travel has won first place in inter-city public transportation. In terms of passenger-miles, the airlines equal the volume of the railroads and buslines combined. The airlines currently are recording some 60 million passenger boardings a year. Domestic traffic is expected to reach the 78-million mark by 1965.
  To better serve this growing volume, the airlines - individually and collectively as an industry - are forging ahead with an unprecedented customer service program. It covers the broad range of activities - reservations, ticketing, passenger check-in, luggage-handling and terminal convenience and comfort.
  Today, the airlines are investing millions in the development of electronic computer systems for reservations. The object: to serve the growing volumes of passengers with greater speed and efficiency. Meanwhile, the industry has been researching, developing and adopting new techniques to streamline procedures. What's more, it is experimenting with services requiring no reservations at all.
  Dramatic innovations in ticketing are making it easier for customers to get their tickets and speed up check-in at the airport. These include "tickets by mail," "do-it-yourself ticketing," "block ticketing," and "teleticketing" (tickets by teletype) - and even ticketing on board the airplane after take-off.
  Further efforts are aimed at reducing passenger lines and waiting - at the ticket counter, at the departure gate, and elsewhere in the terminal area. To speed up airport check-in and pre-flight paperwork, the airlines are expanding the average-weight policy, this time for luggage. Following a year or more of extensive survey and experimentation, the airlines recently got government approval to apply an average weight to suitcases and carry-on items. This policy is now in effect in the United States and on certain overseas routes. Further study is aimed at expansion of this plan.
  This, by the way, has nothing to do with your free-luggage allowance. Luggage is put on the scale, but only to observe whether overweight charges apply. The average-weight system is an operational device - to speed up passenger check-in and aircraft loading operations.
  Meanwhile, many airlines are introducing "push-button" automation to speed up baggage-handling. Such systems include huge luggage containers that are lowered from the bellies of aircraft, and onto wheels - then towed like a train to the terminal. Conveyor systems speed suitcases into the claim area, where an "electric eye" sorts them in a row for self-claiming.
  And through the Air Transport Association of America, the airlines are taking unified action to streamline inter-line luggage service - to improve the efficiency and speed of transfers between airplanes. Similar joint action is taking place in reservations, ticketing, accounting and other areas - all designed to make flying more convenient, more comfortable and more dependable than ever before.