AMERICAN AIR MAILS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18332, 26 February 1934, Page 7

AMERICAN AIR MAILS

ARMY IN CONTROL CONTROVERSY CONTINUES WASHINGTON, Feb. 25. During the three days the army has been flying the air mail, five pilots have been killed and several seriously injured. Almost a dozen aeroplanes have been wrecked.

Most of tho accidents have happened in the mountain section between New York and the middle western cities, where continued storms have made flying difficult.

Private air lines, which have -been deprived of the mail contracts, claim that they are maintaining their regular passenger services, and insist that tho military service has failed, due to the improper training of the pilots, and the lack of radio arid other facilities.

It is indicated that legislation is being rushed for tho return of the air mail contracts to private concerns, but under entirely new systems. The contracts will be designed to lower the cost to the Government and prevent fraud and collusion.

The House 1 of Representatives passed a measure confirming the Government’s emergency use of the army air corps to carry mails, but Republicans bitterly attacked the measure, calling it, ‘‘legalised murder,” and declaring that “six lives had been lost to satisfy the insatiable appetite of politicians for front page publicity." Mr. Farley, testifying before the Senate Committee, continued his defence of the cancellation of the contracts.

Flying conditions in the east were better to-day, and the army moved the mails without interruption. Commercial lines, however, reported a possible grave disaster to an air liner carrying eight persons, and lost somewhere on the olateau of Utah, near the Wyoming dorder. Perhaps it has been caught in a blizzard. It has not been heard of for 36 hours.