Transport: Transatlantic Tussle

As a likely successor to Director Fred Dow Fagg Jr., of the potent Bureau of Air Commerce—slated to retire next June —West Virginia's Congressman Jennings Randolph last week laid before President Roosevelt the name of Charles Augustus Lindbergh. Since Colonel Lindbergh is obviously not hounding Congressman Randolph for political patronage, the suggestion seemed to have been prompted by nothing more than a Congressman's normal appetite for publicity—except for two things: 1) Mr. Randolph's letters dwelt at length on the idea that the U. S. "must continue its world leadership" in transoceanic aviation and 2) Mr. Lindbergh is technical adviser to Pan American Airways, which holds, on Government sufferance, a monopoly of the country's over-ocean flying. And it so happens that Pan American is currently the centre of one of the prettiest little storms that has swirled in Washington in many a moon.

Legislatively the storm is summed up in two bills now before Congress, one of which (Lee-McCarran Bill) would hand U. S. airlines over to the Interstate Commerce Commission while the other (Bland-Copeland Bill) would segregate over-ocean flying from domestic aviation and put it under the Maritime Commission, as Chairman Joseph Patrick Kennedy suggested in his famed report (TIME, Nov. 22). For Pan American, which escaped the visitation of the Black Committee in the airmail investigation, the ultimate decision is vital. Under the Lee-McCarran Bill, the I.C.C. would give preference in granting certificates for overseas air service to applicants already holding the necessary foreign licenses and franchises—which Pan American's shrewd young President Juan Terry Trippe has forehandedly tied up on an exclusive basis in most countries where U. S. planes are likely to land. For Pan American the Lee-McCarran Bill would, in effect, preserve the status quo.

On the other hand, the Bland-Copeland Bill embodies Mr. Kennedy's ideas that transoceanic air lines should supplement the merchant marine. Indeed, he is not adverse to having ship owners go into aviation. His plan is to put overseas aviation on the same footing as shipping—even to the point of providing subsidies to build planes.