Flying a Tiger

When twelve combat veterans of Major General Claire Chennault's famed Flying Tigers sank their savings into an airline in 1945, they were sold on the future of air freight. But, as one Flying Tiger Line executive moaned: "The only trouble is, we've often gone nearly broke trying to get other people to see it." Last week the Tiger Line thought that people were beginning to see things its way. On a gross of $4,964,168, some 60% higher than last year, the line reported a $500,346 net profit (including a $183,500 carryback credit) for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1950.

The Tigers are not an all-freight line yet: more than $1.5 million of last year's revenue came from special charter jobs; another $961,000 came from repairing and maintaining ships of foreign airlines. As Robert William Prescott, 37, the hustling Tiger president, put it: "We've had to get our development money wherever we could find it." Prescott found it by flying anything, anywhere, at any time, from railroad wheels and loads of gravel to globe-girdling tours for college students, and the Pacific airlift (TIME, Aug. 21). Other jobs:

P:To meet the fanciful ideas of a Texan who wanted to fly a group of friends to Vancouver for a weekend, Bob Prescott painted one of his planes like a totem pole, wore a cowpuncher's outfit while piloting it.

P:When the President of Colombia decided last year to improve his country's scrawny live stock, the Tigers flew hundreds of U.S. bulls, rams, boars and stallions to Colombian breeders.

P:When the United Jewish Appeal decided to repatriate 35,000 Yemenite Jews from Southern Arabia, it hired the Tigers to fly them back home--thus, said Prescott, fulfilling the Biblical prophecy that the Yemenites would be returned to Judea on the wings of an angel.

The line has also drummed up a steady business in transporting corpses (it was sued for "mental anguish" by relatives when one shipment was delayed). This spring it added the Furniture Manufacturers' Association of Southern California as a steady customer. Prescott convinced the association that it could save on crating, ship cheaper by air than by the railroads' less-than-carload lots.

By such deals, plus new scheduled routes from CAB (TIME, May 9, 1949), the line has built its monthly payload to 2,000,000 Ibs. in 1949-50, as much as it carried its entire first year. Last week the freight future looked so bright that Bob Prescott planned to expand his 24-plane fleet. He placed a bid for 18 mothballed Air Force C-46s. But Prescott, who has clawed his way through more than one freight-rate battle with the scheduled passenger lines, thinks he still has plenty of fighting to do. Complained he: "As long as [the passenger lines] can charge up their losses to the Post Office, we don't stand a chance. Either they should lose their subsidy or we should get one too."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.