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Show Viu go vers us if, THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PRINT FROM THE DELTA AIRPORT" DICK MORRISON pj,AN XC IN DC-6 . . . Athena Cook may know the ans-, ans-, r t0 the sixty-four dollar quest-perhaps quest-perhaps she could name the tune an Stop The Music; and she might even participate in a Truth Or Consequences program, and by some such means come off with an all-expense-paid tour of New York City, or something. The fact is, however, that without necessarily Knowing or doing any of these things, Athena has done as well as if she actually had hit the jackpot, jack-pot, and thereby hangs a tale. It's a tale about a jackpot named Skeete.-. Bill Cook, that's her husband's folks, live in Chicagoland, and one time Bill and Athena were on a visit back .there, and Athena met Miss Helen May. They got to be quite good friends, and so Miss - May came out to Delta for a visit I I some years ago - - in 1933, to be i exact, and when she left she told Athena to be sure and look her up next time she went back east. The years flew by, and Athena ' just never got a good chance to go east again, so it seems her friend got tired of waiting, and took matters mat-ters into her own hands. Miss May, who is now Mrs. Walther and lives in Blairstown, N. J., went ov er to American Airlines and bought two round trip tickets from Salt Lake to Newark, with a tour of New York City thrown in for good measure, and sent the tickets to Athena in a letter with orders to take off forthwith. Mrs. Walther's nickname, to intimates, is Skeeter, and "Skeeter" is an airplane pilot! among other accomplishments, in her own right, altough it is not known to me whether there's any connection between the nickname Skeeter and the fact that she flies. Not that it matters. The thing that matters, right now, to Athena, is that she did seem to hit the jackpot jack-pot and the jackpot is named Skee ter. Mrs. Cook and her daughter, Jessie Jes-sie Lynn, plan to take off from Salt Lake Airport July 7, on an American Airlines DC-6, for Newark. New-ark. The flight is one that any' flying enthusiast would love. The 1 DC-6's make five miles a minute, at about 40,000 feet, being pressurized. pres-surized. Athena's earlier flying experience" ex-perience" consisted of some flight along the Pacific Coast in small planes; the trans-continental over-weather over-weather flight in the four motor ship will make a smooth contrast to that. Athena and Jessie Lynn will spend a month on their XC trip. 1 SOLOS OUT . . . Hatch Farnsworth made one over easy, on May 16,. He took the solo flight. Now he knows that feeling, like no other feeling there is. "I've got it up and I hope to heaven I can get it back down again". They always do, though. SOLO XC . . . Ron Morley made his solo XC to Salt Lake and Provo Saturdday. and Sunday. The weather was a bit rugged and Ron figures that af ter dodging thunderstorms and lan ding at Vern Carter's airport on 21st South; then landing in the rain at Provo, he can now handle a plane in any situation, j TAKE OFFS AND LANDINGS . . . Grant Workman, with Ron Morley, Mor-ley, flew to Cedar City and St. George last Wednesday. They said is was a "business and pleasure" trip, but wouldn't say what the business part consisted of. Lewis Buffington, who transferred transfer-red from Delta Airport to Yuma, Ariz., a few weeks ago, is now employed em-ployed by the CAA at the tower of the Burbank, Calif, airport. Bob Nichols, who, with his wife and young baby, has been spending spend-ing the last couple of weeks on a flight to Kansas and Nebraska was reported off North Platte at 1005 Sunday, headed for Laramie. A little lit-tle later he was reported back because be-cause of bad weather. WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS . . . In the course of talk reviewing 25 years of progress in aviation, Donaly W. Nyrop, CA Administrator, Administrat-or, said that "6 Piper Cubs and 2 Stearmans were loaded into 3 C-54's C-54's and flown to Iran", along with nine pilots, six mechanics, & 13 tons of supplies. That certainly is going some, when eight airplanes airpla-nes are loaded into three other airplanes, and the whole works flown half around the world. The small planes were needed in Iran to help combat a plague of locusts. Mr. Nyrop noted that ,of all the progress made in the past 25 years the greatest part was made in the last 'five of those years. While Passengers Pas-sengers carried by scheduled airlines air-lines increased from 5,782 in 1926 to 7,600,000 in 1945, another 10 million were added by 1950, bringing bring-ing the total to 17,300,000. In 20 years, the incidence of passenger fatalities on scheduled airlines dropped from 28 per 100 million passenger miles to 1.2, the latter figure being lower than that for private automobile travel. |