AVIATION: Skirmish

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For three months American Export Airlines, the only U.S. line besides Pan American Airways even to try to fly outside the U.S. before the war, has maintained a steadfast silence about its attitude toward international aviation after the war. When Am Ex did not collaborate with the 16 domestic airlines that began downbeating for lots of postwar competition last July, many observers concluded that Am Ex agreed with Pan Am that competition among U.S. lines for world airways would lead to disaster. Last week Am Ex's board chairman and president, William Hugh Coverdale, broke this misleading silence.

In a full-dress Manhattan press conference, reinforced with full-page newspaper advertisements boldly headed "Let's Clear the Air," portly, white-haloed Airman Bill Coverdale established the real Am Ex line:

> The U.S. has all the requisites for leading the world in flying the postwar world. > Am Ex opposes putting U.S. international flying "in the hands of a single American company—a chosen instrument —or a monopoly." It does not believe that "the alternative to monopoly would be unbridled competition."

Coverdale explained this attitude as part of a long-held antimonopoly philosophy. Am Ex, he said, had joined the 16 procompetition airlines in their original declaration of policy to CAB, but kept away from their original public statements because it feared that the 16 neophyte world flyers were out for unbridled competition. Now, he concluded, Am Ex had decided they all favored competition without chaos.

These strong words left the "chosen instrument" policy to a lonely, powerful pair: Juan Terry Trippe's Pan American Airways and William A. Patterson's United Air Lines (TIME, Aug. 23). Nothing daunted, Bill Patterson last week spoke his own strong words in reply to the Am Ex defection. In an open letter to CAB, Patterson bluntly recommended legislation to bar any individual U.S. line from transocean flying except as part of a single U.S. flag operation.

The struggle over the postwar air was still in the skirmish stage.