© International Newsreel
THE FIRST STEP IN ENGLAND. HUBERT SCOTT PAYNE HELPS ME ASHORE
Abroad, the entire industry is generously subsidized by the various governments. Of course, aviation here knows no such support, a fact which means that, so far as we have gone, our industry is on a sound basis economically.
Although air transport in the U. S. A. has had to pay its own way, and is behind somewhat, slightly over 2000 commercial airplanes were constructed in 1927, and operations in the field of mail and transport flying approximated 6,000,000 miles flown. Nearly nine thousand passengers were carried, and two and a half million pounds of freight transported.
Impressive as are these figures, they are not comparable to the volume inevitable.
When I am asked what individuals can do to aid aviation my reply is, to those who haven’t flown: “Fly.” For, whether or not aviation will be found useful in their lives, or whether they find flying pleasant, at least they will have some understanding of what it is, if they go up. Every day all of us have opportunity to do our bit—and to get our bit—by using the air for our long-distance mail, and at least some of our express and freight. And perhaps some who come to touch aviation in these ways, will find an interest which will carry them into the ranks of plane owners.
Most people have quite incorrect ideas about the sensation of flying. Their mental picture of how it feels to go up in a plane is based on the way the plane looks when it takes off and flies, or upon their amusement-park experience in a roller-coaster. Some of the uninitiated compare flying to the memory of the last time they peered over the edge of a high building. The sensation of such moments is almost entirely lacking in a plane. Flying is so matter-of-fact that probably the passenger taking off for the first time will not know when he has left the ground.
I heard a man say as he left a plane after his first trip, “Well, the most remarkable thing about flying is that it isn’t remarkable.”
The sensation which accompanies height, for instance, so much feared by the prospective air passenger, is seldom present. There is no tangible connection between the plane and the earth, as there is in the case of a high building. To look at the street from a height of twenty stories gives some an impulse to jump. In the air, the passenger hasn’t that feeling of absolute height, and he can look with perfect equanimity at the earth below. An explanation is that with the high building there is an actual contact between the body of the observer and the ground, creating a feeling of height. The plane passenger has no longer any vertical solid connecting him with the ground—and the atmosphere which fills the space between the bottom of the plane and the earth doesn’t have the same effect.
Many people seem to think that going up in the air will have some ill effect on their hearts. I know a woman who was determined to die of heart failure if she made a flight. She isn’t logical, for she rolls lazily through life encased in 100 lbs. of extra avoirdupois, which surely adds a greater strain on her heart—besides not giving it any fun, at all.