Transport: Spin-Proof

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At Purdue University's tidy airport near Lafayette, Ind., at commercial fields near twelve other institutions of higher learning across the continent, 330 college students last week were being trained with National Youth Administration money ($100,000 in all) to go into the most deadly activity in U. S. aviation—amateur flying. Vanguard of a host of private pilots that Civil Aeronautics Authority hopes to turn out at the rate of 20,000 a year from hundreds of U. S. colleges, they will have better basic training than the run of cornfield fliers.

They will be turned loose with a minimum of 35 hours' instruction, about that given by most schools for private pilots' licenses, but much less than the minimum given by approved schools to commercial pilots (175 hours) or by the Army to its students (about 325 hours).

There are some 10,000 private fliers in the U. S. and in the four years from 1934 to 1938 there were 690 fatal accidents in U. S. private and miscellaneous flying. But diligent CAA is determined that these totals shall not be increased in proportion to the huge annual increment in amateur fliers for which it will be responsible. Last week it had small-plane manufacturers working on one of the measures it expects the flying industry to take to keep fatalities from reaching a truly appalling figure.

Outlined by CAA were the specifications for an ultrasafe plane it expects manufacturers to build for the pilots CAA will train.

Because spins from stalls cause most of the amateur flying accidents (466 in four years) CAA's most important requirement was that the new ship must neither fall off nor spin from stalls no matter how flown. Other specifications: pilots must be able to slam on brakes at any landing speed without fear of nosing over; the plane must be manageable on the ground in winds up to 30 miles an hour; preferably it should be steered like an auto mobile, have no rudder bar. The only other thing expected of it, joked veteran fliers, was that it should mind the baby.