Transport: Rueful Receiver

Honest, middle-aged Tom E. Braniff was dejected as he stood before a luncheon gathering of aviation's bigwigs one day last week at Manhattan's Hotel Pennsylvania. Subdued and solemn, he accepted for Braniff Airways, Inc. the National Safety Council's 1938 award for middle-sized U. S. airlines. For seven years the line had operated without a passenger fatality. But well did sad Tom Braniff and all at the luncheon know that a few days before the award's presentation (but some weeks after it had been voted) one of his Chicago-Dallas airliners had cracked up just off Oklahoma City's airport on a night takeoff. Seven passengers and the stewardess had died in flames. The pilots and two passengers had been badly injured.

Most of the airplane disasters in the winters of 1936-38 were attributable to weather. So last fall the operators pulled up their socks and determined to lick this factor in 1938-39. They did. During the 1938-39 winter, not a single airliner crashed because of weather. But other troubles reared their ugly heads. Two of the three crashes of the past five months, it was officially revealed last week, were due to mechanical failure. The third was United's West Coast mishap, due to egregious pilot error (TIME, March 6).

Crash experts of CAA's Air Safety Board attributed Braniff's crash to the left engine's throwing a cylinder. As Pilot Claude Seaton turned back to the field the disintegrating motor apparently ripped open its cowling, forming such a centre of head resistance that the ship slewed sidewise into the ground. Like the Braniff crash, the crack-up of a Northwest Airlines Lockheed near Miles City, Mont. Jan. 13 was due to mechanical failure. Last week CAA announced its apparent cause: a fire, originating in a floorboard compartment in the pilot's cabin through which passes the cross-feed emergency gasoline line between the two engines.