The indications are that the time has almost arrived when a beginning of commercial aviation will be successfully made in the United States. Postmaster-General Harry S. New has declared that the Government-operated air mail routes should very shortly become carriers of passengers and express parcels. The air mail, he says, can never be put on a self-sustaining basis so long as the planes carry only mail. And he believes that the public is ready to patronize the air mail lines to the extent of giving them passenger and express business.

President Coolidge has looked somewhat further still into the future-but, as he believes, a not distant future. He sees the time approaching when the Government will turn the carrying of air mail over to reliable firms and itself retire from the business of operating planes. The carrying of the mail will constitute a nucleus for the private operation of air routes carrying passengers and freight. The Postal Air Service, he thinks, has demonstrated the efficiency of American fliers and American aircraft, and has thus laid the foundation for successful commercial aviation.

The machinery is already in motion for putting into effect the Aviation Act passed at the recent session of Congress, mainly for the encouragement of commercial aviation. William P. McCracken, Assistant Secretary of Commerce in charge of aviation, has announced the beginning of work on the survey of routes and the marking and lighting of landing-fields. A corps of engineer aviators has undertaken the surveying of five routes, and bids are in for supplying lights for them. Mr. McCracken hopes to light, before the end of the year, nearly seven thousand miles of surveyed airways.

Source: The Outlook, Sept 1, 1926