AVIATION: Geronimo!

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Almost a year to the day after taking over, La Motte T. Cohu last week abruptly bailed out of his seat as president of Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc. All the explanation T.W.A.'s stockholders got before he took to the silk was a statement that he had "completed the job" of putting the company back on a straight course.

Airline folk thought there was more to it than that. For one thing, T.W.A. was not yet flying smoothly. Due chiefly to Cohu's payroll slashing, its $8,000,000 loss in 1947 was only a little more than half the loss of 1946. But only three weeks ago, T.W.A. notified the Civil Aeronautics Board that it was so short of cash that it would be "unable to continue even a semblance of its present service" unless it got a $3.000,000 boost in foreign mail rates—and got it right now. Moreover, only two weeks ago Cohu had been re-elected president—and had said not a word about quitting.

Cohu, like Jack Frye before him, had flown into a squall with T.W.A.'s controlling stockholder, Howard Hughes. Cohu asked Hughes for complete authority to run the line, and had suggested that Hughes put his stock into a trusteeship which Cohu could control. Hughes refused and there was nothing left for Cohu to do but get out. Cohu was reportedly set to take a top job with Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corp. Likeliest bet to succeed him in T.W.A. was Lieut. General Harold Lee George (ret.), who ran the ATC during the war, and until recently bossed Peruvian International Airways.