“Pilots receive identification cards and licenses when they have satisfactorily passed their medical, piloting and intelligence tests. The license is renewable periodically, depending upon the class in which it has been issued. These classes include the air transport, limited commercial, industrial, private and student pilot licenses. Each calls for different qualifications, all of which are explained in the Air Commerce Regulations.
“Aircraft are registered in classes according to weight. All craft which operate in interstate commerce or in the furtherance of a business which includes interstate commerce are required to be licensed. All aircraft whether operating in interstate commerce non-commercially or solely within a State must bear identification numbers issued by the department and must obey the air traffic rules contained in the Air Commerce Regulations.
“The Department of Commerce keeps in touch constantly with activities of the manufacturers and of the aerial service and transport operators by means of periodical surveys. These surveys reveal that during 1927 a total of 2,011 commercial airplanes were constructed, with unfilled orders for 907 planes, representing a total value of $12,502,405. The operations in the field by the commercial flyers approximate 13,000,000 miles of flying; 500,000 passengers carried, and 2,500,000 pounds of freight and express transported.
“The Airways Division selects and establishes intermediate landing fields and installs and maintains lighting equipment and other aids to avigation on established airways. In addition, it is charged with the establishment of radio aids, maintenance of a weather reporting service and a general communication system throughout the airways.
“The field service now consists of 20 airway extension superintendents, all pilots, 11 inspectors, 6 engineers, 4 mechanics, and in addition, numerous radio operators, caretakers and weather observers, at intermediate fields and in some cases at beacon lights.”
The air problems of the army and navy are peculiar to themselves. Governmental support is naturally important in the development of planes and motors and in quickening production. Then, too, both branches are turning out trained pilots, useful in national emergency, many of whom will eventually find their way into the fields of commercial aviation.
I can’t help expressing the wish that men already trained could have more opportunity to fly. Many excellent flyers who served in the war, and later, want to keep in practise. They can, of course, join the reserves and fly Peteys (P.T.s), the training plane which replaced the Jennys, recently condemned. But flying a P.T. doesn’t equip one to pilot the modern pursuit and larger planes. Unless these men are able to afford the luxuries of planes of their own, they can’t obtain any adequate training and their great value in possible national emergency is lessened. Could they be permitted to fly new type planes that are in the army hangars, it would save all the lost motion of retaining them in time of need, besides keeping them interested.
Probably no department of aviation touches the business people of the country more closely than the air mail, which, by the way, includes not only letters but express and freight as well. The Aircraft Year Book analysis of the activities of the Post Office Department is so admirable I again quote from it verbatim:
“The Post Office Department, relieved of the details of the actual operations of flying the mail through letting out this work at public bidding to private operators, has been devoting its efforts exclusively under the direction of Second Assistant Postmaster General W. Irving Glover, to the building up of the network of privately operated air mail lines and of bringing to the attention of the public the value of the air mail service.
“One of the high lights in the operation of the air mail service in 1927 was the splendid demonstration by this service of the safety of commercial operations with able pilots, good equipment and efficient ground organization, under most trying flying conditions. This is attested by the Post Office Department’s record last year of a single fatality in 1,413,381 miles of day and night air transportation.