To the Orient

Pan American Airways, which for long was the only frog in the big Pacific puddle, may soon get fast-hopping company. Last week Civil Aeronautics Board examiners recommended that Northwest Airlines, Inc. should be given a transpacific route. The examiners, whose findings are usually followed by CAB, recommended that Northwest fly the adventurous Great Circle route from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Manila via Alaska, Paramushiro, Tokyo and Shanghai. As Northwest now flies from New York to Minneapolis (TIME, Jan. 1), it would thus have the first direct service from New York to the Orient.

But Pan Am got something too. The examiners recommended that Pan Am hold its prewar mid-Pacific service from San Francisco and Los Angeles to Hong Kong via Manila, expand to Tokyo, Bangkok, Batavia and Calcutta, where it would connect up with Pan Am's routes east from New York, thus nearly circle the globe. It would also keep its prewar route to New Zealand and add a route to Australia via Noumea.

Flying Northwest's cold, snow and fog blanketed route to the Orient will be a new and daring experience for most civilian travelers, but old stuff to Northwest's frostbitten pilots. For Army's Air Transport Command Northwest's pilots have piled up more than 17 million miles of flying north of the U.S. border. Thanks to improved de-icing equipment, they have been able to fly 95% of all ATC's tough north Pacific schedules on time.

Along the Northwest Passage to the Orient, Northwest will have two advantages over its mid-Pacific rival: 1) most of the flying will be overland, where emergency bases can be built; 2) the route will be shorter. New York will be 9,537 air miles from Manila via Northwest's route, v. 10,588 miles via San Francisco and Honolulu.

But the examiners recommended for Pan Am the plushiest passenger runs from the mainland to Honolulu. And in the South Pacific Pan Am will have the air lanes to itself until the anxious British, now flying a military route from San Diego to Australia, put in a commercial service.

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