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Eight-- The Airline Pilot-- July, 1947
"The Best in the World"- That's What Air Line Presidents Say!

[[6 images]] C.E. Woolman, W.A. Patterson, J.W. Miller, Sigmund Janas, E.V. Rickenbacker Lamotte T. Cohu

Nation's Air Line Heads Laud Pilots
When Mr. and Mrs. Air Traveling Public step aboard today's air liners they can have the assurance that the man in the cockpit is one of the best trained, most carefully selected and most skillful and proficient air line pilots in the world. 
Cautious men by nature with a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility for the passengers entrusted to his care, the air line pilot of today is not the happy-g-lucky, devil-may-care pilot of story book legend but a man to whom safety is of paramount and first order importance. 
The air line pilot is a professional man, technically trained, whose inherent natural ability is enhanced and developed to the greatest possible degree by a continuous process of training and study that continues as long as he flies the air lines. 
An indication of the importance which air line pilots attach to air safety is found in the make-up of their representing organization, the Air Line Pilots Association, which ever since its inception in 1930, has devoted over 50 per cent of its time, efforts and money to the promotion of air safety and whose mottos is "Schedule with Safety". 

All-Encompassing
In addition to taking an active part in legislation affecting air line safety, the air line pilots maintain a well-staffed engineering department at their Association headquarters in Chicago which is supplemented by hundreds of pilot experts in the field whose versatile talents encompass all phases of engineering and air safety, many of them nationally renowned as technical experts in fields ranging from instruments flying to thunderstorm research. 
Men who are closes to the air line pilots and know their make up, character and ability-- David L. Behncke, president of the Air Line Pilots Association, who has been their spokesman for 17 years, and the heads of the nation's leading air lines-- are unanimous in the opinion that despite all safety devices and developments in the final analysis the safety of the plane rests in the hands of the pilots and that the skill, proficiency and training of American pilots is unequalled anywhere else in the world. 
Mr. Behncke, who represents 7,000 of the nation's air line pilots, said he felt that the air line pilots "had demonstrated their ability over a period of years without a shadow of a doubt to pilot their planes under correct circumstances with complete safety and keep the United States out in front in the field of air safety." 

"They Do the Job"
"Our pilots," he said, "have shown they can do the job and the aim of every one of them is one hundred per cent safety. The air line pilots' attitude toward complete safety and constant caution is a natural one because it is motivated by the most potent of al human instincts-- that of self-presevation. Pilots just don't take chances when they are at the controls of an air liner, because, as one of them recently put it: 'I love my wife and children just as much as that passenger back in seat seven.' 
"I am accurately reflecting the views of all air line pilots, however, when I say they are completely unanimous in feeling they need the assistance of an independent Air Safety Board to discover the true facts of how and why accidents happen in order to promote the greatest degree of air safety in which the air line pilots are a very vital link. There is no question that we have the best and most skillful pilots in the world, as they themselves have proved, but in order for them to function at peak efficiency we must give them the tools they need, one of the most vital of which is an impartial accident investigation agency."  

What the Bosses Think
Because of the glamour associated with his profession, the true picture of the air line pilot is often distorted when people begin to wonder: just what kind of a fellow is the air line pilot and where does he come in in the scheme of air safety. The most intimate insight into this can be found largely in the opinions of their employers, who united today to laud the part the pilots have played in air safety. Individually and as a group, here is what some of their bosses have to say about them: 
W.A. PATTERSON, PRESIDENT, UNITED AIR LINES: 
"In the final analysis, the safety of the plane rests in the hands of the pilot. It is his skill in handling a plane and using wisely the safety aids provided which result directly in safe travel in the skies. He has made possible the outstanding safety record of the nation's scheduled air lines. Behind him is an army of skilled technicians who support him and contribute in no small measure to the safety of every plane in flight. 
"The air line pilot is a professional man. His professional knowledge and skill, not supply and demand, will determine his pay-- and he will continue to be highly paid as long as he assumes responsibility for the comfort and safety of passengers who fly with him. 
"In the months and years to come, he will play an increasingly important part in accomplishing, with the aid of wartime aviation developments, greater safety in addition to regularity and dependability of service regardless of weather that will compare with surface transportation." 

J.W. MILLER, PRESIDENT, Mid-Continent Airlines: 
"Suggestions made by pilots themselves form the backbone of Mid-Continent Airlines' program of flight training, which has been a major factor in the company's 100 per cent safety record. 
"In addition to serving as regular line captains, the veteran check pilots are responsible, to a large degree, for procedures embodied in MCA's operations manual, and take pride in the individualized training they provide each new first officer. 
"One of these procedures calls for every copilot to spend a full month on a regular run with the same captain, which affords an opportunity for close acquaintanceship and thorough training. 
"Through constant vigilance and conservative judgement by experienced pilots, maintenance personnel and flight dispatchers, Mid-Continent Airlines has flown 676,912 persons, a total of about 195,050,194 passenger miles in its ten and a half years of experience without a single fatality or injury to a passenger or crew member." 

SIGMUND JANAS, President, Colonial Airlines: 
"The high calibre and flying ability of American scheduled air line pilots has, in my opinion, no equal anywhere in the world. They are carefully trained and their own pride in their work keeps them constantly studying every progress in the art of flying. 
"The scheduled air line pilots whom I have known personally over twenty years in aviation have been men who believed in aviation and its future and recognized their responsibility as captains of an airplane in insuring, by constant care, the safety of their plane's flight. This attitude on the part of the scheduled air line pilots has played a most important part in the unequalled safety record which Colonial Airlines has maintained for seventeen years without a single accident. 
"My motto that SAFETY IS NO ACCIDENT has been carefully lived up to by our pilots and our safety record has been achieved because the pilots themselves do not compromise safety in the carrying out of their daily duties. 
"I have great admiration for all of the scheduled air line pilots throughout the world but I do feel that our own American scheduled air line pilots are second to none in the whole world and being proud of this fact, they are doing everything within their power to keep American aviation out in front from the standpoint of safety and in the advancement of the art of flying." 
  
E.V. RICKENBACKER, President, Eastern Air Lines: 
"To me, the air line transport pilots of the United States are one of the finest groups of men with whom I have ever had the privilege of being associated. They are the most disciplined body of professional men that I know of today outside of the medical profession. 
"They are interested in the safety, comfort, and well-being of the American traveling public, and their interest in the welfare of the security of these United States is beyond question." 

C.E. WOOLMAN, President, Delta Air Lines: 
"For years, the quality of air line pilots has been famous, and from the very beginning of our industry we selected flyers who were not only skilled in their profession, but men of sterling character and highest intelligence.
"The Air Forces during the recent war used every conceivable metal and physical test to select the highest type of personnel for flight training, and only the best of these leaders succeeded in measuring up to the fast-moving military program. Since the end of the war, the air lines have gone one step further in filtering from the very cream of the Air Forces those pilots required for expanded commercial operations. Those picked by the air lines have every conceivable qualification for carrying on the best traditions of our industry and consistently improving an inevitable record of performance and safety. They have the capacity, as do the older air line pilots, to go forward with all the improved devices and techniques which will be seen during the next few years. 
"The public expects greater things of the airlines, in a shorter length of time, than has ever been demanded of any....

(Continued on Page 7, Col. 1)

[[5 images]]
Croil Hunter, Robert F. Six, Carleton Putnam, G.T. Baker, C. Bedell Monro