How to get an air job

By Jack Byrne
If you have the nerve and ambition to become a cloudman, this will tell you where to go to bat—and how.
Back in the days when the clipper ships spread their great, white sails from Hudson’s Bay clear down around the Horn, the youth of America heard the call of the sea—the whistle of a hurricane through the shrouds, the boom, boom, boom of the surf pounding a coral shore. They heard the call and they answered it; and with their youth and their strength and their undying courage they toiled till their new flag ruled the seas.
Then came the call of the West. The pioneer spirit that was Kit Carson’s, that was Boone’s, reached out through the land. Clerks put down their pens and joined the wagon trains; farmers gave up the plows to strap on their muskets. From every walk in life they came to battle with their wilderness. And they stretched their homes from coast to coast to rule the land.
The sea, first; then the land. And now they have come to that last great frontier—the air!
The advance man has made toward his conquest of the air is common knowledge. The development of heavier-than-air craft from a purely experimental stage to its present place in the commercial world has been a part of our lives; in a sense, we have all grown up with it. We have come naturally to recognize aviation as one of the prime factors of the future—and the same pioneer spirit that conquered the land and the sea is impelling our young men to ask questions about it.
“Does aviation offer me an opportunity?” they want to know. And then they ask, “How can I take advantage of this opportunity? How can I learn aviation and get a job in the air?”
The answer to the first question is emphatically, YES! American aviation today has reached a good sound beginning. The countries of Europe may boast more widespread routes, may point to their greater number of planes and a greater volume of business, but experts now declare unanimously that this condition is only temporary. The United States has solved its air problem in typical Yankee style—and our unsubsidized, privately-owned companies form a solid basis upon which to build.