Airline Safety

To the Editors:

As an airline captain for one of our largest carriers, I congratulate you on doing a fair and factual piece on aviation safety [April 11]. The machines have become as sound and foolproof as man can design--but man himself is the weak link.

Still stamped indelibly inside my forehead is what used to be on Navy ready-room walls--"Flying itself is not inherently dangerous, but like the sea, it is unmercifully unforgiving of human error."

Arthur Glowka Stamford, Conn.

The blind cannot lead the blind. No amount of regulations will ever substitute for good judgment. There should not have been double operations on that runway under that extremely limited visibility.

How many lives and how much money would be saved if airlines would lower schedule reliability by about 1% because of bad weather?

Franklin T. ("Hank ") Kurt South Brooksville, Me.

Will the little "black boxes" tell who was responsible for the loss of 575 lives at Tenerife? No, the bombers of Las Palmas Airport already hold claim to that honor.

Bombers, hijackers, arsonists and kidnapers must accept responsibility for the effects of their actions.

B. Holbert Manhattan, Kans.

Your article "The Constant Quest for Safety" stated that one recommendation of an FAA panel to improve cabin safety is "giving crews better training for emergencies" and "making sure that flight attendants man the exit doors during a landing instead of frantically collecting cocktail glasses."

Based on my experience as an American Airlines flight attendant for the past four years, I feel that I have been given and continue to be given excellent emergency training. Any time that I have "frantically" collected glasses before landing it has been because I had to argue with passengers who insisted on having the last sip and keeping the glass until the last possible moment. Flight attendants need the cooperation of passengers, who, for the most part, have come to take safety for granted.

Ron Aparo Irving, Texas

If, as you report, a controller is forbidden to tell a pilot to "Hold for takeoff' because the mere mention of "takeoff' could trigger a response in the mind of the pilot and cause him to throw the throttles open prematurely, then what was the Tenerife controller doing saying, "Standby for takeoff clearance"?

Robert B. Crim Naugatuck, Conn.

1 simply cannot understand why, in the name of the public's right to know, you must infringe on personal suffering, shock and crisis by showing people's agony in living (or dying) color.

Showing the burning plane is one thing, but photographing those devastated people is beyond the bounds of decency and respect.

Carol S. Michalec Newport News, Va.

Back to the Indians

"Should We Give the U.S. Back to the Indians [April 11]?" That's not the issue. The issue is whether other Americans are ready to take the Indians seriously. Indians are not demanding the U.S. back. They are asking for some belated consideration and justice so often overlooked in the past.

Paul H. Strege St. Louis

How refreshing to see the question raised! To be consistent with the moral stand we have been taking toward Africa, the answer must be: "Of course we should!" Or does our sense of justice and moral indignation apply only to a continent where our economic interest is so slight that it does not impinge upon our piety?

Jerry H. Simpson Jr. Charlotte, N.C.

Frank Trippett seems to understand the historic, legal and moral issues surrounding the rash of Indian land claims that are sweeping the country. What he fails to understand is that the Indians are after the return of their land, not a monetary settlement or the award of a symbolic parcel of land. Tokenism will no longer suffice, for the Indians have learned the ways of the white man. The Indian is, in fact, using a legal system that he has learned to understand, and the entire world is watching to see if it works.

Russell M. Peters, President

Mashpee Wampanoag Indian

Tribal Council

Mashpee, Mass.

I read with astonishment Essayist Trippett's remark that it is "impossible to imagine either the courts or Congress actually returning long-populated lands to the Indians."

The court and Congress have ordered the Navajo tribe to move 3,495 Navajos from their ancestral homes in order to "give the land back" to the Hopi Indians. The largest forced ethnic relocation of humans since the hysterical internment of the Japanese during World War II is taking place with the approval of the Federal Government. This treatment has been described by Government bureaucrats as the result of a longstanding policy never to interfere in disputes among Indians.

To encourage this forced migration to unknown lands, the Navajos have been fined $400,000 for contempt of court. Their contempt was caused by being unable to live without food. They could not promptly comply with a court order requiring an immediate reduction of their sheep and goats by 90%.

Perhaps the residents of Maine should likewise be fined for overpopulating their range. Justice is sometimes a supple thing.

George P. Vlassis, General Counsel The Navajo Nation

Window Rock, Navajo Nation (Ariz.)

"Should We Give the U.S. Back to

the Indians?" What makes you think

they'd want it in its present condition?

(Mrs.) Almeda Morrison

Harsen 's Island, Mich.

The Indians did not own the land in America; they simply used it much as animals do. Ownership comes with improvements, such as fences, trees, roads, buildings, etc.

To give the U.S. back to the Indians would be as erroneous as giving me a large part of Colorado because my ancestors and I have hunted and fished over most of it.

Allen Smith Redding, Calif.

Let us hope that something finally will be done to ensure some measure of an honorable solution, even if a completely honorable one is impossible.

I am disturbed, however, by Mr. Trippett's failure to mention the lawsuits that might result if some of these tribes win their claims. For example, will the Pequot Indians return to the Niantic Indians the lands they stole in the early 17th century? Will the Pawnee return the lands they stole from the Sioux and Cheyenne? Will the Iroquois return all the land they stole from the Huron, the Tobacco, the Erie, the Conestoga and the Illinois?

Robert Oiis Dearborn, Mich.

It is noted that the town of Mashpee, Mass., has filed a counterclaim for $200 million as the cost of improvements. Who ever told the white man that a $100,000 house is an improvement over a do-it-yourself teepee? Is a six-lane paved highway with speeding autos an improvement over the dirt road between villages?

Terrance Mitchell Park Forest, Ill.

I have a question: Who are the "Americans" to call the native people "Indians"?

Stephen Iacketta Eagle Mills, N. Y.

Dammed Lousewort

What a classic your article the "Dammed Lousewort" [April 11] was! Imagine the gall of this preposterous plant to halt the construction of a "$668 million hydroelectric project" like the Dickey-Lincoln Dam in Maine. For heaven's sake, the species was thought extinct anyway--let's make it official and drown it under a few billion gallons of water. All this endangered-species-list bit is getting boring.

Karen M. Parkman Farmington, N.H.

If I were an out-of-work construction worker in Maine, I would sure take care of the Furbish lousewort--probably at night.

Kent Williams Hesperia, Calif.

No Graveyard

I read with interest your article "The Remaking of S-l," regarding proposals to recodify the federal criminal code [April 4]. As part of that article, your correspondent emphasized the work being done in the Senate, and referred to the House Judiciary Committee as having "long been a graveyard for complicated legislation." I must take serious objection to that comment. The members of the committee have worked too hard for too many years on too many pieces of complex and highly technical legislation to permit that remark to stand without rebuttal.

In recent years we have drafted three articles impeaching a President of the U.S., written a complete revision of the highly technical federal copyright laws and--after three years of effort --are about to do the same with the Fed eral Bankruptcy Act. We have promulgated new rules of criminal procedure and evidence for the federal courts, expanded and extended the Voting Rights Act of 1965, initiated and passed the first major revision of antitrust laws in more than 25 years, and conducted two unprecedented constitutional inquiries under the 25th Amendment. We are now and have since 1973 been closely examining the very issue raised in your article--criminal code reform.

Peter W. Rodino Jr., Chairman

Judiciary Committee

House of Representatives

Washington, D.C.

Peter Lagomorph

If a young rodent hopped to life in the pages of children's literature in 1902, his name certainly could not have been Peter Rabbit [April 11]. Rabbits belong to the biological group of Lagomorpha, along with such relatives as hares and pikas.

The rodents (Rodentia), the largest order of mammals, include rats, mice. ,gophers, squirrels, beavers and porcupines, but no rabbits.

(Mrs.) Elizabeth J. Holscher Rockford, Ohio

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