Fatal Statistics

In 1946, U.S. scheduled airlines carried 14,000,000 passengers a total of 7,000,000,000 miles--a record. They also killed more passengers than ever before: 75 in the U.S., 4 overseas,* in eight crashes. From these figures the air passenger of 1947 could take this small comfort: it worked out at one death for 60,000,000 passenger-miles. And this was much better than in previous years.

Even railroads, which once boasted of a year's operation with but a single passenger killed, found wartime wear & tear on equipment, compounded by employe negligence, showing in the fatal statistics: in seven accidents, 66 killed.

The airlines' heavier death toll had been caused by more traffic, and more congestion at airports (many of them inadequate). One hope of betterment lay in the fact that "ground-controlled approach," in which radar is used to guide a pilot on to a field he cannot see, was being installed at New York, Chicago and Washington airports. Pan American Airways had put it in at Gander, Newfoundland (after a Belgian airliner crashed there, killing 27). If used at all large airports, G.C.A. might cut airline fatalities in half.

* But there was no dearth of overseas voyagers. New York's LaGuardia Field in one day last week cleared a record 43 transatlantic flights with 1,143 passengers.

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