Ground Loop

The smoke-swirled office was littered with sandwich scraps, cigaret stubs and half-filled cups of cold coffee. At 5:12 a.m., two haggard, bleary men--Paul Richter, vice president of Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc. and David Behncke, president of the Airline Pilots Association (A.F.L.), scratched weary signatures on a truce. After 25 days, the first major U.S. airline strike was over.

The dawn broke cheerlessly for both sides. The 1,400 striking pilots, out-of-pocket $850,000 in lost wages, had not yet won their fight for more pay for flying four-motored Constellations and Skymasters (TIME, Oct. 28). A three-man arbitration board would review the whole issue. T.W.A., out $7,000,000 in flying revenue, had nearly ground-looped. Growled Millionaire Howard Hughes, T.W.A.'s majority stockholder: "It will take a year to recover, and longer before T.W.A. can employ as many people again. . . . T.W.A. had lost $8,000,000 during 1946 before the strike. . . . You cannot destroy the company you work for and profit by it."

Under the truce, T.W.A. agreed to rehire all striking pilots by Dec. 1. But 15,000 other unorganized employees, bounced by the company without notice when flights were suspended, were less lucky. T.W.A. had optimistically tripled its force for overseas expansion. A sag in postwar transatlantic air traffic last week moved three other U.S. airlines to pare their payrolls (see BUSINESS). T.W.A. might prefer to keep its wings clipped.

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