DAILY DRAMA

Evening Star, Issue 21007, 22 January 1932, Page 14

DAILY DRAMA

1 o" " " • 4 AT AN AIRPORT HOW THE SHIPS JOURNEY It is about 4 o’clock in the morning at Newark Airport. There is a cold wind cutting across the field, blowing up little eddies of dust that pelt the windows of hangars and the office where a lone despatcher sits. The darkness is tho impenetrable blanket that covers the earth just before dawn. And somewhere to the west, driving through the dark murk, is a plane seeking this dreary field, writes Russell Owen, in the 1 New York Times.’

Tho despatcher looks at Iris clock and fiddles with a switcli on the desk before him. Ho turns on a loudspeaker. “He’ll bo, on in a minute now,” he says, glancing again at the clock. There is a drone in the loud-speaker and then a quick, far-off voice. “4163, 4163,” it calls. “0.K., 4163, Newark,” says the despatches “.4163, 4163, ten thousand feet, good visibility, north-west wind, position 7-A, position 7-A. 0.K.” The message is repeated hy the despatcher, and then, as ho snaps off the loud-speaker, he turns and puts a pin labelled 4163 into a map ruled in squares to correspond with the figures given him by_ tho pilot. “ He’s coming fast with tho wind,” ho says. ‘And I hot he’s cold.” Twice more the reports come in, the last call being only a few miles away; then the despatcher snaps off his instrument and lights his pipe. We go out into darkness, turning up our coat collars against the wind. Far away is a pulsing hum, the song of a plane riding the west wind. Two lights appear, tiny points that shoot beams through the night as if some strange creature is darting its sight forward, feeling for a landing. LIGHTS ON. There is a roar overhead and the plane sweeps across as. the floodlights and boundary lights are turned on, making a path of silver. Around in a large circle it flies, and then dips into the light, sliding down with a shrill whistling of wind in the wires. It touches lightly, and hen with another burst of sound rolls up to the hangar door. Men run forward as it stops, unfasten ■ the mail compartment, and throw out bags. A tall figure rises from the cockpit and, w’lh the clumsiness of one who has been cramped by cold and the burden of a parachute as a seat pack, steps down, and with chilled fingers unbuckles the straps. The pilot looks up with surprise at friends who have come out so early to see him land. “ What’s the matter with you—crazy?” he says. “Didn’t you ever see an aeroplane before?” The attitude of anyone who has the slightest curiosity about tho night mail is incomprehensible to him. - He has flown it for years. From his cockpit he takes a magazine. He has been read ing an adventure story as he flitted through tho night at 10,000 ft on the heels of a gale! The floodlights are turned off again and the field is again left to darkness and to wind. The next scene in this daily drama of the airport is announced by the sputter of a motor behind one of the hangars. It is a plane warming up to take newspapers to Washington, Its cabin loac!:d, it rolls Out on the field; the lights go on, and it takes off; after gaining altitude it turns south and is quickly lost to sight. Then as the sky is turning grey in tho east—the first sign of dawn—n mail plane hops off for Boston. While workers are rolling over in bed a. J cursing alarm clocks, a plane filled with mail starts for Montreal. Its pilot hat. a bad til one day just winter. He had put on skis at Albany for a landing in the snow at Montreal, and t -e of them became loose and stuck out so that it dragged the plane into a skidding circle. OBSTINATE. Tho pilot could not shake it off; the more he opened his motor the faster he went around. When he slowed down and stopped skidding he lost altitude. Finally he picked out the best place he could find near a road and “sat down,” crashing the plane badly. But his mailbags, piled behind him, flew forward and so completely surrounded him that he was not ;even scratched. The first transport for Washington goes out at 7.35 o’clock, and from then on until late at night the big field becomes the intefpart of a railroad station. There are 108 scheduled planes a day in and out of Newark, and 400 passengers on an average are carried. They go to Chicago and on to the Pacific Coast, to Atlanta and far down into the South-west; to Boston, Montreal, Washington, Pittsburgh—and every lino has some intermediate stops. The machines slide in deliberately at the end of their journeys, roll up to the landing gatesj and unload their passengers. Likewise they depart, with no more of an atmosphere of adventure than there is about the Grand Central Station. Passengers may sometimes enter a plane with a nervous smile of reassurance to themselves, but they land looking bored. _ In tlie waiting rooms of the various lines—for as yet there is not a central station, although one is planned—men and women and sometimes children wait for the planes. They have had their tickets validated at the counter, their baggage has been weighed, and their seats_ have been assigned. They are permitted J,- irty pounds of baggage without an extra charge, but often they get on with their arms loaded with bundles, which, to the annoyance of the company, find their way into suitcases. They arrive by bus or car only a short time before their planes depart, and tho planes themselves do not come up to the point of embarkation until five minutes before they arc to take off. Tho pilot saunters through the room, and the passengers look curiously at the man to whom they are to entrust their lives for the next few hours. These young men in trim uniforms, with clean, brown faces, are smilingly nonchalant. The mere sight of them is insurance against nervousness. ■ WEATHER REPORTS. The pilot goes to the despatched room, where he gets a sheet of paper giving him reports gathered by the United States Weather Bureau all along his route. A complete report of this kind can bo obtained on ten minutes’ notice. The plane has been taxied to the passenger entrance in front of the waiting room, and if it is a large one it has been towed there tail first by a tractor, so that its powerful engines will not blow dirt all over the place, (For the airport is still a little dusty, athough the cement runways are being put in as fast as the city can afford them., In the meantime passengers and their friends are protected by a minimum use of the motors.) The waiting plane is a big one, bound for Chicago, and when it is filled and the motors are started, it is ignominiously towed backward on to tho field. An attendant runs out with two flags, one white and one red, and holds

the red one in the air until he is sure that the plane far out across the field is in no danger from other craft. If the sky is clear he gives the signal with the white flag, and in a minute the big ship is in the air and turning with stately, wide-winged precision toward the west.

Aeroplanes come and go with such regularity that one almost tires of watching them, although that is not quite possible around an airport. The field manager, an ex-army pilot, who fought in the war, Lieutenant Richard Aldworth, turns every time he hears a plane coming in. “ I suppose 1 have seen 100,000 takeoffs and landings,” ho says, “ but I always have to watch them. “ We can hear that plane which just left for Boston in a little while; let’s go up to the despatcher’s room,” he adds as a silver tri-motored plane leaves the field and heads over New York. INFORMATION. There is no more interesting place at an airport than the despatcher’s room. Along one wall are sheets of different coloured paper, hanging from clips. On them are pasted weather reports from tho ports along the routes, sp that the pilots can glance over them and nol only get a perfect picture of weather conditions, but also of the condition of the various fields. Take one on the Atlanta route. The first report on the ribbon that has clicked like ticker tape out of an automatic machim reads: — “ NK SCD CLDS UNL 15 WNW 24 61 GUSTY TEMPORARY REPAIRS E SIDE OF FI D.” Which means; “ Newark, scattered clouds, unlimited ceiling, visibility fifteen miles, west-north-west wind, twenty-four miles an hour, temperature 61,” etc. And the last entry of this series reads;—■ “ AG CLR SMOKY UNL 5 NW 14 71,” or “ Atlanta, clear but smoky, unlimited ceiling, visibility five miles, north-west wind, fourteen miles an hour, temperature 71.” The paper sheets are coloured according to the route—red, yellow, white—north, south, east. At one side is a map on which the routes are traced in pins coloured to match the paper, so that at a glance may be seen the source of every report, and its possible effect on flying calculated. Planes may be rerouted or grounded by orders from headquarters.