Domestic Air Transportation

Report Outline
Questions of Public Policy Before Congress
Development of Air Commerce
Postwar Prospects and Problems
Special Focus

Questions of Public Policy Before Congress

Under the spur of war necessity, a quarter century of normal progress in United States aeronautical development has been telescoped into the last four years. Advances since commencement of the rearmament program in the summer of 1940 have laid the ground work for a vast expansion of civil air routes immediately after the war, for the use of larger and faster planes for long-distance passenger and cargo service, and for rapid establishment a multiplicity of short-haul services by air.

Revolutionary changes in aviation techniques have raised new problems of regulation both within the United States and in the field of international flying. It is generally agreed by private interests and public bodies concerned with commercial aviation that these problems can hardly be solved under existing statutes or the international air conventions in force before the war.

Although the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which is the fundamental law of United States commercial aviation, is less than six years old, it is already outmoded in many respects. The system of transportation the act of 1938 was designed to regulate has completely transformed itself during the last six years; even more startling changes are predicted for the years immediately ahead.