Flights, Fliers

Fortunately, Lieut.-Commander P. V. H. Weems, U. S. N., is a good-humored fellow of wit, charm and a grin. Fortunately, because he has been chosen to teach the difficult science of navigation to the one man who by reputation and instinct apparently knows plenty about it: Charles Augustus Lindbergh.

Young, pretty, impulsive, utterly reckless, Thea Rasche, Germany's crack lady stunt-flier, arrived here last week and repaired at once to Curtiss Field, there to inspect a Stinson Detroiter monoplane in which she plans to fly to Germany.

Courtly but honest, as the traditional Irishman, Maj. James C. Fitzmaurice of transatlantic fame ventured the opinion last week that women are temperamentally unsuited for flying. Hastening to point out that there are exceptions to every rule, he remarked that "when she brings a ship into a field, a woman pilot seems to be possessed with the idea that she is about to come down on the Sahara Desert."

To see America right, Alfred Loewenstein, wealthy Belgian capitalist recently arrived, bought a ten-passenger Fokker cabin plane last week for $55,000. Arriving in Philadelphia on its first hop, he jumped excitedly from the cockpit, ran so close to one of its three whirring motors that his derby was knocked sideways, sat down to think things over.