Safety in the Air

Report Outline
Flying Safety on Eve of Jet Travel
Measures to Protect Air Travelers
Developments in Federal Regulation

Flying Safety on Eve of Jet Travel

Striking Air Transportation Safety Record

Giant jet transports, scheduled to go into coast-to-coast service next January, will traverse a congested airspace regulated by an air traffic control system that has not yet caught up with the meteoric rise in aviation activity. Establishment of the Federal Aviation Agency, under an act approved Aug. 23, is expected to promote air safety in the dawning era of commercial jet flying. But considering the tremendous growth still expected in commercial, private, and military air traffic, extraordinary efforts will be needed to prevent increases in air disasters, particularly from midair collisions. Stuart G. Tipton, president of the Air Transport Association of America, said on May 29: “The American airspace has rapidly become a vanishing natural resource insofar as free access and capacity for safe operation of aircraft is concerned.” Speedy jet planes disproportionately shrink available airspace.

The irony of the serious air safety problems now confronting the nation is that they stem largely from traffic expansion that has been fostered by past achievements in making it safer to fly. Public confidence in air transportation has soared with steady improvement in the safety record of American aviation. Fewer than 1.2 million passengers were carried on scheduled domestic airlines in 1938. The annual total had risen to 12.2 million by 1946, to 17.6 million by 1950. Last year nearly 45 million passengers rode the scheduled domestic airlines.

These 45 million passengers were flown over 26 billion passenger-miles. While the number of passengers was more than 35 times greater than in 1938—and the number of passenger-miles about 50 times greater—the passenger fatality rate was only 1/45 of the rate 20 years earlier. Scheduled domestic airlines averaged 2.2 fatalities per 100 million passenger-miles for the five-year period ended in 1947; the average fell to 1.05 fatalities for the five years ended in 1952 and dropped to an all-time low of 0.41 for the five years from 1953 through 1957. James R, Durfee, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, told a Houston audience on July 3 that: