Transport: Pilot's Pilot

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Strong as an ox in a fight (he weighs over 200 lb.). Acosta got into many a drunken brawl. When he was fined $10 for public intoxication in 1933, his estranged wife paid that sum to save him from jail. In 1934 he was arrested again, given three months. For all his difficulties with the law, oldtime pilots still rated him top, considered him ''just a big, easygoing fellow with a genius for flying which cannot be used in these regulated days."

That he still had genius there was no doubt. At Roosevelt Field one day the builder of a rickety homemade plane was unable to get it off the ground. Other pilots gave the contraption up as utterly hopeless. Acosta, who had not flown in a year, climbed in, took off with ease, put the ship through vertical banks, dives, zooms, wingovers.*

Last week, after being "grounded" nearly seven years, Bert Acosta was back in the air. The Department of Commerce, convinced of his reformation, finally lifted its ban, granted him a "learner's permit." After five hours solo, the best living pilot was scheduled this week to take his flight test for a transport license. Said Alford J. ("Al") Williams, famed onetime Navy stunt pilot: "Aviation needs Acosta badly. Seeing him take a ship off the ground is the best eye tonic I've had in years."