Global Transportation 89 



freight rates unless he can cut his ground time losses to the 

 barest minimum, for time is the essence of all things." 



Mr. Lippman says that "when the chips are down" the 

 operator who keeps his planes in the air for the greatest num- 

 ber of hours out of each twenty-four will be the man who 

 rakes in the pot. He revealed that observations made at an 

 airfield where the ground time of planes averaged one hour 

 indicated that only twenty minutes was needed to move the 

 cargo into and out of the plane. The remaining forty minutes 

 was used by four experienced handlers in unlashing and lash- 

 ing cargo to the walls and deck with ropes. 



Consider what that forty minutes cost the operator. A 

 Douglas C-47 plane hauling an average pay load of 6,000 

 pounds at 180 miles per hour has a value of 540 ton-miles per 

 hour as a commercial carrier (3 tons x 180 mph). At present 

 air-express rates, the earning power of the -47 is $432 per 

 hour; so each cargo would then cost $100 just to be made 

 secure without reckoning the handlers' salaries. 



The above figures on ton-miles and earnings per hour ex- 

 plain why airplane designers and air-transport officials are 

 interested in designing new cargo planes that will cut the time 

 lost in loading and unloading. Some of these experts favor a 

 high- wing, twin-engined monoplane (the C-j6 Caravan is of 

 this type) built around a cargo space of at least 25x8x8 feet 

 a railroad boxcar is about 40 x 9 x 9. 



Charles H. Babb, well-known aircraft broker, who can tell 

 at any moment where most of the world's nonmilitary planes 

 are, who owns them, and what shape they are in, has designed 

 a cargo plane that is almost a freight car with wings. Loading 

 and unloading the Babb plane would be facilitated by hav- 

 ing a removable nose with a ramp for the landing of heavy 

 mining machinery, trucks, and other bulky freight. 



Harlan D. Fowler, who invented the Fowler flap to give 

 greater lift to a plane's wing, has designed a cargo plane made 



