NOT ALL CAN FLY

Evening Star, Issue 22459, 2 October 1936, Page 12

NOT ALL CAN FLY

ODDS AGAINST BEING GOOD PILOT The odds are three to oue that the average American does not want to fly, eight to one that ho cannot learn to fly at all, and 25 to one that he cannot learn to fly well enough to avoid killing himself, says Kenneth Brown Collings, an airman, in the ‘ American Mercury.’ So all the chatter about America taking to wings as it took to automobiles is just so much whistling in the wind. Very few people are capable of becoming good pilots of aeroplanes, and unless flying is restricted to good pilots the brave new invention will turn out to be the cause of innumerable tragedies. The aeroplane is not like the automobile, no matter how perfect it may be. It operates in every direction, while the automobile can turn only in one plane. It has to keep going, with no time out, instead of being supported by good old mother earth in case things start to go wrong. In turning a corner the automobile simply turns, the tyres taking whatever tendency to skidding there may be; but the aeroplane must be banked at just the right angle to avoid stalling. When you want to get out of a car you simply stop it and get out, but an aeroplane has to be brought to an exact height from the ground at a certain speed, the engine stalled, and the final drop measured in inches. It requires something more than training. The something more than training that the aeroplane demands is air sense. Air sense cannot be measured except in terms of flying. One’s health must be perfect, one’s nerves strong, muscles trained and ready, organs and arteries air in perfect condition, and besides all that one must want to fly. liven then it is not certain that you will be able to react automatically in the right way when there is no time left for thinking. How groat a proportion of the population could supply all these requirements, including the age and education . tests? Take the army tests as a standard, although they arc not drawn up for civilian flying. The applicants are chosen from better than average homes, have always been well fed, and therefore are healthy. They must bo in their early twenties and have the equivalent of a college education to be considered at all. But the physical examination rejects four out of five of them. The 20 per cent, who survive are sent to Randolph Field for a year’s training. If they pass that they have another year at Kelly’s Field. After that only half of them graduate. | The Bureau of Air Commerce wants

commercial flyers, whose duties will not call for dive-bombing and other purely military antics. But the bureau’s figures show that only one-third of its students qualify as pilots; only one out of four students becomes a good pilot, one cannot fly at all, and two are “ fair,” which moans that they may fly private machines, but not commercial aircraft. Restrictions on the piloting of aircraft must be kept strict, because, while you could stay off the railroads or off the highways if you thought trains and automobiles too dangerous, you cannot get out from under aeroplanes. There have been collisions and crashes in the past, and there will be many more to come if aeroplanes increase in number without a strict watch being kept on their operators. When the crashes are numerous enough then America will realise that very few people can ever hope to pilot an aeroplane successfully.