Hardheaded Healer

Sick U.S. airlines were queued up a block long at the door of the Civil Aeronautics Board last week, wailing for fast first aid. Mostly, they wanted higher mail rates, higher passenger fares. (A notable exception was Eastern Air Lines, which asked CAB to approve a 10% reduction in its round-trip fares.) Some, in acute distress, had special problems. In fact, there were suddenly so many special problems that many an airman began to wonder: How well had CAB done its big job of supervising the airlines?

In general, airmen had thought that CAB was doing a good job. But now that CAB's policies were being strongly tested for the first time, they were not so certain. One big trouble seemed to be CAB's policy of making "big ones out of little ones" --i.e., encouraging the overanxious smaller lines to expand too fast, and often giving parallel routes when there is not enough traffic to support them.

The Mistakes. A prime example last week was Western Air Lines. In 1944 CAB, disregarding its own examiner's recommendation in favor of United Airlines, had given Western the Denver to Los Angeles route. But Western developed what its new president (TIME, Dec. 23) called a bad case of "expansionitis," ran out of cash. Western agreed last week to sell the route, and four planes, to United for $4,000,000--if CAB approves.

The economics of red ink gave CAB little choice. But some of the older members of CAB still showed some reluctance to change with the wind.

The split in CAB's thinking was plain to see last week when CAB approved, by a 4-to-1 vote, a 90% boost in Chicago and Southern's mail pay on its New Orleans-Havana route. The lone dissenter was CAB's newest member and chairman, James McCauley Landis. Landis, who usually gets what he wants, was bent on taking a hard, realistic look at the rates and routes awarded by CAB in the past. He did not think that subsidies should be boosted to make up for CAB's mistakes in granting routes in the first place. Forthwith, Landis ordered an investigation on whether Chicago and Southern's as yet un-flown routes beyond Havana (to San Juan and Caracas) should not be suspended.

The Men. In his nine months as chairman, leathery Jim Landis, 47, had done a great deal to change CAB's thinking, speed up its machinery. A law student and then a law professor at Harvard, he went to Washington in the early days of the New Deal as one of Felix Frankfurter's "Happy Hotdogs." Brain-Truster Landis helped write the Securities Act of 1933, became SEC chairman in 1935, then dean of Harvard's law school. But Landis was soon back in Washington, where he ran the Office of Civilian Defense.

By the time he took over as CAB chairman, Jim Landis had built up a solid reputation as a crack administrator, fair & square. (He also has a redoubtable reputation as a bridge and poker player.) What he lacked was aviation know-how. Some of the CAB veterans supplied that. Colonel Clarence M. Young, 57, CAB's technical expert and onetime Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, is a top man. Oswald Ryan, 58, another Harvard lawyer and one of the original members of the board, is CAB's legalist, steady, if not brilliant. Harllee Branch, 67, a onetime Washington correspondent, was Second Assistant Postmaster General in charge of air mail under Jim Farley (his specialty: political chores). But Josh Lee, 55, onetime Bible-spouting Senator from Oklahoma, has not shone as an aviation expert.

The Methods. Despite some weak spots, CAB is now functioning with a great deal more dispatch than ever before. It is also being a lot tougher. It has indeed dished out some mail-rate boosts to help floundering lines. And it will probably grant an average boost in passenger rates from 4.5-c- to 5-c- a mile. An increase in air mail from 5-c- to 6-c- is in the offing too. Even CAB thought it had cut rates too fast, led astray by abnormal war traffic.

But with the newer rates CABoss Landis intends to keep a closer watch on airline financing. Many lines have stubbornly chosen to go into debt to buy new equipment rather than issue stock and thus weaken the holdings of those now in control. From now on, CAB intends to seek more authority over line financing.

Despite the big losses of U.S. lines on international routes, Boss Landis does not intend to reverse CAB's traditional policy against the "community company" (one Government-approved line for overseas operations owned by several U.S. companies). Landis is dead sure that, in a year or so, competing U.S. lines could be making money on foreign operations.

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