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Aviation History
1955
1955 - 0688.PDF
686 FLIGHT (Above) the scene of this sequence is the American Airlines freight terminal at La Guardia. The receiving dock (left) admits freight at truck-bed height. Loads are moved into the building by roller conveyor, palletized and fork-lifted into destination racks. INTRODUCTION TO AIR FREIGHT . . . services pay their way even with the aid of mail subsidies. Onemay readily appreciate, therefore, the problems of operating all- freight aircraft (which, incidentally, were not designed as freightersfrom the outset but were adapted from passenger-carrying air- liners) when the yield per ton-mile is only half or one-third of thatearned by the passenger-carrying aircraft. In America three types of traffic are grouped under the broadtitle of air cargo:—<1) air freight; (2) air express; (3) air mail. Air freight, with which this article is primarily concerned, differsfrom (2) and (3) in that the airline is the carrier and frequently the selling agent also. Freight space is sold in the same way aspassenger space though the load is handled and stowed in a different way and is carried for a lower fare. In the case of air express, the carrier is the Railway ExpressAgency Inc. (Air Express Division), whose use of the airlines as sub-contractors is incidental to the Agency's basic function ofselling a competitive door-to-door delivery service. The Agency does not discriminate between airlines and consigns its loads onthe fastest and most convenient flights available. Nor is there any contract between the public and the airlines in the case of air mail,which is a service offered by the Post Office for the high-speed delivery of cards, letters, printed matter and parcels. There seems no reason why the bulk of express and mail trafficshould not always be carried as supplementary loads on passenger aircraft. By contrast, the all-freight service is aviation's equivalentto the goods train or cargo ship, carrying bulky loads at relatively low rates. During a recent visit to America the writer was able to studyat first hand the air-freight operations, methods and business philosophy of American Airlines. To do so was to obtain anintroduction to most aspects of this many-sided subject. There were good reasons for selecting this particular airline, as thefollowing notes on the company's background will show. American Airlines are in most senses the largest airlines in theworld. When the company's current re-equipment programme is completed in 1957 its fleet will consist of 206 aircraft, includingan all-freight division of 16 machines—nine DC-4s and seven DC-6As. America's present all-freight fleet consists of nineDC-4s and four DC-6As. In terms of both passenger and cargo ton-miles the company has a larger turnover than any other air-line; seats on its aircraft are now sold at the rate of nearly six million annually. Freight and express ton-miles flown by Ameri-can Airlines in 1954 amounted to nearly 65m—more than the total ton-miles (passenger, freight and mail) flown on thescheduled services of B.EA. and all British independent operators during the same period. American Airlines inaugurated all-freight services, with con-verted DC-3s, in October 1944. DC-4 freighters were intro- duced in June 1946 and DC-6A Liftmasters—the first aircraftbuilt specifically for long-range cargo work—came into service in May 1953. Since the introduction of those DC-3 servicesA.A's freight traffic has grown enormously—from 2m ton-miles in 1944-45 to over 30 times that total last year. It is importantto note that these figures include the freight carried on passenger services and that the working capacity provided by the all-freightdivision is still supplementary to that of the main fleet. The nine DC-4s and four DC-6As are today carrying about35 per cent of AA's total freight and express traffic. They are operated over a carefully planned network embracing one-fifthof the 77 cities served by American Airlines—including, of course, such major traffic centres as New York, Buffalo, Detroit,Chicago and Los Angeles. The backbone of the all-freight network is the trans-con-tinental route between New York and Los Angeles, which is flown nightly by DC-6As to give next-day delivery to consignees oneither side of the continent. Calls are made at Detroit and Chicago in each direction.The price of air freight relative to the other types of service operated by American can be gauged fro:n the earnings in centsper ton-mile (a cent is worth 0.8 pence) in 1954. These were: passenger, 54 cents; mail, 39 cents; express, 37 cents; freight,less than 22 cents. This figure of 22 cents per ton-mile is the Unloading a DC-4 freighter at Newark Airport the "scissors" truck is one of many types of handling equipment used at U.S. terminals. WS0423 f;i AMRfCA/Vji
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