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Rh new attitude on the part of the traveling public entered the picture. Airlines began to be accepted as a necessity, like railroads and bus lines. Increas­ingly it became apparent that there was a need for frequency of service and lowered fares. Airplanes sometimes offered no advantages over ground facil­ities in time saving, if they didn’t fly often enough to be a convenience to passengers. For instance, a man who wished, say, to go to Cleveland from New York might find a plane left for the west once a day at nine o’clock in the morning. If he couldn’t leave until noon, he could make better time by tak­ing a train that night and arriving at Cleveland about the time the next plane was leaving from New York. But the operators couldn’t be ex­pected to put on a heavy schedule to accommodate only a few customers. To reach enough to justify several additional trips a day, it was obvious fares had to be reduced.

While some operators were engrossed with the problem of the long haul, others, equally pioneer­ing, studied those of shorter routes at higher speeds. In Transcontinental Air Transport, I came to know Gene Vidal and Paul Collins, both members of that organization. Collins, who was superinten­dent of operations, had been a famous air mail flyer with, as I remember it, 8000 hours to his credit. A great pilot himself, he understood the background of airplanes and other pilots.

Vidal, an ex-army flyer and engineer, had been on the technical staff of T. A. T. His interest and