Northwest Goes East

The U.S. got a fourth transcontinental airline last week. Northwest Airlines got permission from the Civil Aeronautics Board to extend its present route, from Seattle to Milwaukee, all the way to New York, via Detroit. But Northwest's tough, ambitious president, Croil Hunter, 51, will not be able to bite his plum till he can get some six or seven more planes--probably DC-3s at first--to fly the new route. As other transcontinental routes are overloaded, Hunter hopes that this will not take long.

Since he joined Northwest back in 1932 as traffic manager, Hunter has done things in a hurry. He rose to be vice president and general manager within a year, then helped push the line into big-league operations by extending its routes west from Bismarck, N.D. to Seattle and Portland. Traffic was light. In some years, mail subsidies were 60% of Northwest's revenues. But Hunter made a reputation of flying his planes through bad weather--and over mountainous terrain--on schedule. Northwest also flew without a fatal passenger accident until construction bugs in their new Lockheed 14s spoiled this record with a crash in January 1938. Northwest's earnings cracked up too. They went into the red for two years.

By 1940, Northwest was back in the black, and last year its net profits of $517,000 were the highest ever. After the war, Hunter expects to stretch Northwest's routes all the way to the Orient by way of Alaska, to which he is already flying for the Army. To make this trans-pacific route financially feasible, Hunter had to have the Milwaukee-New York link. But he made it plain last week that he wants no help for this big job. He brushed off the suggestion of CABoss Lloyd Welch Pogue that Northwest merge with Pennsylvania-Central Airlines, presumably to put Northwest on a better competitive footing with the other transcontinental lines. Said Hunter: "It is an amazing and inexplicable idea."

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