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To All Members  -11-  October 15, 1942

ship.  Where confusion and disruption are rampant, we will always find them.  In all other professions and crafts during time of war those in civil life have always been willing and anxious to impart their knowledge to the military people, but in no case has there ever been a replacement of civilian employees by military personnel.  In other words, air line pilot and copilot positions are commercial positions and they are all under contract with the carriers.  Now we find the carriers, through their organization (the Air Transport Association) and Mr. Gorrelll, sponsoring the replacing of people in these commercial positions by Navy officers.  Of course, this is all done under the guise of training but such officer and any other military officer can get better training but such officer and any other military officer can get better training if he is present in the cockpit as a student because he has two men to teach him instead of one.

Another weakness in this practice is, we all know we must train as many pilots as we can that the copilot seat is the training ground for first pilots.  Therefore, wouldn't it be better to train two pilots instead of one?  If this trend is allowed to progress, there will soon be a drying up of the only source of first pilot material and then I suppose the next move of Mr. Gorrell's and the ATA's will be (knowing of their illogical actions) to put Army officers in the first pilots' seats of airliners. 

The Air Line Pilots Association is now faced with the job of removing these people from copilot seats and leaving them in cockpits under the instruction of regular air line first pilot and copilot crews.  This is another matter that came to our attention indirectly and was already well under way and quite thoroughly in effect on certain air lines before we knew about it.  None of the pilots reported what was happening.  We are all willing to do our part for national defense, as our actions have proved, but we just can't go for too many Air Transport Association ideas or we will find ourselves without a profession, organization, or anything else.  To get the Army into the commercial picture to this extent is also not good for the Army nor for the air lines but the latter are far too shortsighted to realize this.  They just don't think that way.

We are now getting around to the time of the war when bad weather is again with us.  WE will have ice, fog, snow, and sleet just as we always have during the winter months and this time we are meeting it with people in cockpits who are, in many instances, much less experienced.  We have people with less experience on the ground and the whole picture is cut up and confused to an alarming degree.  IN other words, the air line machine has a lot of new parts that haven't been broken in and there may be parts that don't fit.  Under this kind of circumstances, what is the logical thing to do?  Common sense dictates to slow up to the extent that bad weather accidents may be avoided.  If you are not reasonably certain you can get by with a trip, it is far better to cancel.  Above all, we don't want to run into another streak of accidents this fall and winter.  Your organization has sent out warnings in the past that have been (judging from what happened) totally disregarded.  Let's not disregard this warning because we have plenty of things to do and plenty of trouble on our hands without starting another battle about "pilot error."  We are