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Show : AVIATION NOTES BOOST AIRPORT REVENUES Soaring air traffic figures at passenger-jammed terminals throughout through-out the United States are spurring municipal efforts to pull airports out of debt by development of non-aviation non-aviation concessions as well as increased in-creased charges to airlines, according accord-ing to a report of the American Municipal association. Example of current action aimed at making airports self-sustaining community centers instead of mere air depots is the agreement made between the city of Chicago and operators op-erators of a new municipal air terminal ter-minal restaurant now under construction. con-struction. The restaurant concessionaire conces-sionaire will pay Chicago 5 per cent of gross sales plus 40 per cent of net receipts as well as regular cafe permits and license fees. Such non-aviation concessions are the subject of increased interest inter-est to municipal airport authorities who expect postwar air traffic growth ' to boost airport operating expenses to $200,000,000 annually within the next decade. Increased revenues from concessions and increased in-creased landing fee revenues are suggested as the principal means available to balance airport budgets. bud-gets. EXIT THE PILOT An automatic flight controller a "push button" system assisted by secondary control devices is enabling en-abling Douglas C-54 Skymasters to make blind take-offs and landings. The new development differs from the robot plane since the full automatic auto-matic flight is performed in a plane without a "mother ship." It Is possible pos-sible with the automatic flight controller con-troller . for a plane to take off by "pushbutton" and reach a destination destina-tion without further manipulation of any controls. The device regulates the plane's altitude, sends the plane into glider range and operates the landing gear. When the plane touches the runway, the throttle automatically cuts back and the brakes are applied ap-plied automatically. The nation's first air milk delivery de-livery service will be inaugurated inaug-urated soon by the Hawthorn-Mellody Hawthorn-Mellody dairy farm of Chicago. The dairy hopes to use refrigerated refrig-erated planes to carry milk from Wisconsin farms to its dairy at Libertyville, 111., where it is constructing a "milk landing field. " NEW AIRMAIL STAMP . . . This is the new five-cent airmail stamp struck to meet the decrease de-crease in airmail postage rates from eight to five cents an ounce. It becomes effective October 1. Central design of the stamp is a modern four-motored transport plane in flight. NEW SAFETY DEVICE Heralded as a new safety device, the "fault detector"' has been developed de-veloped in Sweden and installed on Swedish commercial airliners. Exhaustively Ex-haustively tested, the new invention quickly indicates imperfections in the engine even before ordinary instruments in-struments show any reaction. The device consists of a small steel pin placed in a metal cylinder attached to the battery of the plane and connected con-nected with a warning bulb on the Instrument panel. |