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Show aro very rs.:nV, ' -.."Iced. There are comparetively few accidents; ac-cidents; yet millions of passenger miles are flown every day. The Deseret News recently in-quired in-quired into the matter of flying , safety and concluded that "Flying is safe. As safe that is, an any other human activity." The News quoted an insurance research group as saying that "You are as safe in an airplane as you are home in bed." To illustrate the extent of flying today, the News reminded us that more people now commute between bet-ween San Francisco and Los Angeles Ang-eles by air than by any other means of transportation. The death dea-th rate of 1.1 person per million passenger miles 'flown is lower than that of private automobile travel. NEW BONANZA . . . The Utah State Aeronautical Commission Com-mission has ordered a new Beech-craft Beech-craft Bonanza 4-place plane for official use, according to a State Finance Commission announce -ment made last Friday. The new-plane new-plane will cost about $17,000, less a trade-in allowance of some $10 thousand for the one years old plane now in use. THE WINNAH 1 1 ! The winner of the "Powder Puff Derby" from Santa Ana, Calif, to Detroit this year was Miss Claire McMillen, of Santa Ana, the lady who flew the 1950 race as co-pilot with Clara Davis. Clara did .not fly this year because she was a member mem-ber of the official race committee. Miss McMillen, with Mrs. Frances Fran-ces Bera, of Bellflower, Cal., as co-pilot flew the distance in less than 49 hours. Their plane was a Cessna 140. It was the eighth to land, but the handicap rule which rated the entrants according to advertised ad-vertised cruising speed resulted in their being declared official winners. win-ners. COST FIGURES . . . All The News That's Fit To Print - From The Delta Airport. By Dick Morrison PASSES TEST . . . Bob Nichols passed his flight test 'for commercial pilot license last Thursday, August 23. It was a windy day, far from ideal for precision flying and landings, but the wind did not cause him any serious trouble. A DC-3 owned by the Gulf Oil Co. has been in and out of Delta airport several times since August 20. The ship is used for company transportation and geological work It is equipped with the latest electronic el-ectronic devices both for navigation naviga-tion and geological exploration. DC-B DOWN . . . Information was received at the airport that a United Airlines DC-6-A, making UAL flight 649, made an emergency landing at Hanks-ville Hanks-ville about 9:30 a. m. Sunday. The report indicated that the landing was made safely. The plane passed over Grand Junction Colo, at 0841. Forty two minutes later it radioed that the pilot had feathered out the No. 1 engine due to mechanical trouble, and two minutes after that ,at 0945, that the No. 4 engine had backfired and caught fire and the pilot had feathered it and started emergency descent. He chose Hanksville 'for the landing partly because it could be easily located from mountain land marks. The No. 4 engine sustained extensive damage. This emergency landing was made only two days after a DC-6-B crashed as it was nearing Oakland, Oak-land, Cal., airport last Friday morning. mor-ning. A similar plane crashed into a mountain in Colorado on June 30. It was on Oct. 24, ( 1947, that a DC-6 caught fire and crashed just short of the airport at Bryce Can- yon, Utah. It would almost seem that these planes are followed by a jinx; but the accidents seemed to result from different causes. The Bryce Canyon crash resulted, apparently, from the plane taking fire in the air. The Colorado crash, it has been suggested, may have been the result of a freak "skip" of the radio range signals as a result of which the plane followed the beam toward Douglas, Ariz, instead of Denver; and the Oakland crash oc- curred during a time o'f poor visib-I visib-I ility in clouds and fog. SAFETY RECORD . . . While airplane accidents usually get sensational publicity, the fact remains that anyone's chances of being involved in such an accident The cost of building the air force for World War III is going up like a rocket, partly because of shrink--age in the value of the dollar, and partly because the new planes are much bigger andfancier. A B-17, which was once the biggest big-gest bomber, cost a mere $185,000 The B-29 once cost only $640,000; while a B-36 costs $3,500,000. The "airframe" cost of an F-51 was $26,741, while that of a modern mod-ern F-86 is $179,309. The amount charged to engineering was only $698, as against $19,529; and tooling tool-ing cost was $2044 against $23,425. The old Norden Bombsight, which wh-ich was accurate from 25,000 ft. altitude, cost $2500; while the modern counterpart costs a hundred hun-dred times as much! While cost of some new devices may be brought down as manufacturing manufac-turing techniques are improved, the inflationary factor can only be checked by ' the Federal Government Govern-ment itself, and then only by the method reducing the amount ol money in circulation. Since some of the government's methods oi checking inflation are about as sensible as using gasoline to put out a fire, there really isn't much reason to expect inflation will be checked. "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword"; and, in politics, we may soon see that those who have lived by inflation will die by inflation. It's going to be something to see; not necessarily necess-arily pleasant. |