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Show Express Air Routes, Branch Lines Need of Future, Says Expert America's skyways, like America's Ameri-ca's highways, must be straightened and modernized at a cost of millions of dollars if they are to bear this nation's expanded postwar air traffic traf-fic safely and economically. David E. Postle, Civil Aeronautics board member, says in the July issue is-sue of Flying magazine that the simplest sim-plest solution is to replace our present pres-ent fixed, jagged and indirect air lanes with great two-way "boulevards." "boule-vards." These long-distance "express" "ex-press" routes would be fed by "local" "lo-cal" or stub airways, connecting bypassed by-passed cities with the fast aerial arteries. Postle says the two greatest weaknesses weak-nesses in our present system are the indirect, city-to-city hops which are un-economical, and the lack of adequate ade-quate traffic control over all aircraft, air-craft, both private and commercial. As an indication of the problems facing the CAA, some 300 applications applica-tions are now on file for commercial feeder and cargo airlines to more than 4,000 cities. Others are arriving arriv-ing daily and indications are that every city of any size will demand some form of air service. Coupled with this prospective hopeless overlapping and intersecting intersect-ing is the probability that 500,000 private aircraft will be in the air by 1950. To control these unknown, unplotted flights that often infringe upon the air-highway space, our present system of traffic control, already al-ready at the breaking point, must be modernized at fantastic cost. Manual operation of flight progress prog-ress boards must give way to electrically elec-trically operated boards, a system that can be enlarged constantly in direct proportion to the increase in air traffic. "We can achieve freedom and efficiency ef-ficiency of flight, simplicity of regulation regu-lation and reduction of air traffic control to the essential degree only by the elimination of our present civil airways," he summarized. |
