Mail Goes Through

From the first of the year until last week only eight airmail pilots were killed in crashes. Within five clays last week another died and one saved himself. As usual, the mail was saved.*

In Pittsburgh, noonday crowds were alarmed to see a plane come spinning down through the murk, straight for the rooftops. At 500 ft. a small form separated itself from the plane, a parachute billowed out. The ship crashed noisily on the roof of the old Machinery Building at Frankfort & Duquesne Streets, tumbled off and fell upon two unoccupied automobiles. Floating earthward Pilot Melvin Garlow of Pennsylvania Airlines got his 'chute fouled on a cornice of the building. He cut himself loose, reached the ground with only a sprained ankle. Before accepting aid, Pilot Garlow crawled into his wrecked plane, made sure his mail was safe.

In Salt Lake City, while a blinding snowstorm raged, the airport radioman heard the voice of Pilot Norman W. Potter, flying up from Oakland with the night transcontinental mail: "Eight miles north of Grantsville. Heavy snow. All O. K." He heard no more; Pilot Potter did not bring the mail in. Next day a searching party found him dead in the wreckage of his plane, under eight inches of snow, only ten miles from the Salt Lake airport. His mail cargo, scattered about, was recovered. Pilot Potter's death was the second in United Air Lines' five years operation of the Chicago-Oakland route, in which 15,000,000 mi. have been flown.

* MaiI lost since Jan. 1 was 1,169 lb. or.013 of the 9,000,000 lb. carried.

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