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Show SAFEST WAY Pilot Sets Safety Mark NEW YORK, N.Y. Shorty Clark will tell you that flying is the safest way to travel. He should know, he flew for 33 years and never had an accident. At the age of 60 he retired as a pilot for Pan American World Airways. Air-ways. In the 33 years of flying, including in-cluding 13 in the navy, Clark flew more than 21,450 hours. Statisticians estimate he covered more than 3,-000,000 3,-000,000 miles. And, In all that time, he never had an accident, nor has any passenger ever so much as suffered a scratch. He' insists, however, that there's nothing unusual about his record. He says there are a lot of pilots who fly just as carefully and safely as he does, "Most accidents," he says, "are caused by carelessness. The best safety precaution is for a pilot to follow every instruction of the CAA and the air line. Especially, never be afraid to turn back." Warned by Passenger On one flight, a passenger noted oil leaking over a wing. Clark's instruments in-struments soon showed the leakage, and he immediately turned back to the airport he had taken off from. "I probably could have made It to where we were headed," he says, "but the regulations say make for the nearest airport when something goes wrong. 1 didn't try to make it, but turned right around and went back." Other safety rules that Clark feels are necessary and proper are the cockpit checkup, no overloading and figuring out a "point of no return". The cockpit check up is a form for the pilot and co-pilot to make a pre-take-off check on all equipment. He remembers one domestic air liner that cracked up when the controls con-trols locked, and he feels pretty sure that the pilot should have discovered dis-covered that if he'd made a proper cockpit checkup. Overloading Is Dangerous "Overloading," he says, "is a mistake. If anything goes wrong, you don't stand a chance in an overloaded over-loaded plane. That's what caused the crash of that plane from Puerto Rico last year. The pilot couldn't get back down because his plane was overloaded." The "point of no return" is a spot, plotted by the .navigator, beyond which the plane can't go back where it started with the gas it carries. It's important to know that, so the plane can go back if anything any-thing goes wrong. Clark thinks the Bermuda Sky Queen, which was lost at sea, ran into head winds and couldn't make the trip. The pilot should have turned back before be-fore he reached his "point of no return". re-turn". Now that he's retired. Shorty Clark Isn't going to loaf. He's applied ap-plied for a safety inspectorship with I the CAA, and, as a retired navy warrant officer, he wouldn't be sur- , prised at a call from Uncle Sam. ' "Loafing is a fine art," says Clark, "and I don't have the talent for it." |