6. Developing Air Lines
The race had whetted Amelia’s competitive appetite, although the event, generally, had annoyed her because of the unnecessary excitement and trouble which the women fliers had caused. She would have preferred a straight and simple race, one in which she could have competed, without fanfare, with men. This last possibility was out of the question for the time being; she turned, therefore, to establishing some speed records of her own. The Vega had yet to prove its mettle at full throttle.
In November of that same year AE set the new speed record for women over a one-mile distance; and a few months later she established the international speed record for women over a 100-kilometer course.
In her fever of activity, Amelia now turned from competitive flying and magazine writing to developing air lines. With a characteristic burst of initial energy, she plunged into first one then another aspect of air-line operation, first with one organization then with another. But, as with nursing and medicine, and as at Columbia when she was too impatient to follow a prescribed course of study, she soon tired of the new activities. There was no occupation on the ground that could hold her interest for long.
Her destiny, she knew, lay in the air; but she would have to continue getting more and more flying time before she could finally break the ties with mundane pursuits. Working for an air line at least offered chances to fly, even if it meant paying for the privilege by trying to sell aviation to stubborn women.
Mothers and wives, Amelia was to complain later, were the great stumbling blocks in her attempt to convince the American public that flying was safe. It seemed that sons and daughters and husbands were willing to take to the air, but a matriarchal opposition barred the way. As she had used her arguments writing for Cosmopolitan, so now AE used them again in speaking tours for the cause of aviation in general, and for Transcontinental Air Transport, the air line she represented, in particular.
Amelia flew from point to point on the Ludington Line of TAT and delivered her talks to women’s groups. Often her mother would go along with her. AE would point to her mother seated at the speaker’s table and indicate her proof: if mother and daughter could fly together, the air was as safe for any woman and her family as the highway and the railroad. Gradually women began to be sold.
Working on TAT with Amelia were two young men, Paul Collins and Gene Vidal. They had many progressive ideas about the running of an air line and were anxious to put them into operation in their own business. They took AE into the new organization with them as a vice-president.
As she had before, Amelia worked primarily with the women passengers, finding them, quieting them, convincing them. Again she made many lecture tours. She always began her speeches by asking for a show of hands from those who had flown. The career women invariably won out over their less daring sisters from a college group or a women’s club.
Difficulties of all kinds were encountered in the running of the line. Irate customers, usually women, complained to Amelia about cabin temperatures that were either too high or too low. Would the plane please stop bumping? Did they have to fly into air pockets? One passenger insisted that she would not pay extra for her thirteen pieces of luggage; after all, the trains did not set any silly limits at thirty pounds. A woman bought a ticket for herself and what she said was a small lap dog: Amelia insisted that the woman sit in the same seat with the lap dog, which, it turned out, was the size of a small pony. At another time the same seat was sold to two different people. Frequently passengers were grounded by the weather and had to be turned over to the railroads.