Quick Answer

As the new boss of the Civil Aeronautics Board, Chairman Joseph J. O'Connell Jr. thought he could speed things up. He held that it should not take months--as it often has--for CAB to make up its mind. Last week he got a chance to prove it. Up before CAB came one of the airlines' bitterest squabbles--the fight between Braniff Airways, Inc. and Pan American Airways Corp. for business in Latin America (TIME, Aug. 13, 1945).

In three weeks, President Thomas Braniff expects to start flying his new routes from Houston, Tex. to Lima, Peru; eventually he will fly to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. The routes cut straight across the juicy domains once monopolized by Pan American Airways and Pan American-Grace (Panagra flies the West Coast, Pan Am the East). Both lines opposed Braniff's entry on the ground that the territory could not support a third U.S. flag line. But President Truman, taking the matter out of CAB's hands, gave Braniff the routes.

A month ago, Pan Am and Panagra carried their fight to Congress. They pointed out that Braniff had asked for airmail subsidies of $3,000,000 a year, 22 times what it had originally estimated it would need. Last week they made a last-ditch effort to get CAB to hold new hearings.

Less than 100 hours after it heard their arguments, CAB gave its answer: no. New hearings, said the Board, would "cast a dark shadow across the certificate already lawfully issued and in full force and effect." Moreover, it was reasonable that a line flying a new route should get a bigger subsidy; both Pan Am and Panagra had so benefited when they started.

At week's end Pan Am was fighting back in the only way still open: it refused to let Braniff use Pan Am South American airport facilities, communications.

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