The Air Freight Specialist

His client is buying FLY. Why? What is FLY? What is he buying? He is buying a share in the world's largest all-cargo airline, Flying Tiger Line. He is investing in a big company that operates the finest equipment and facilities to be found in the field of air freight. Flying Tiger Line's maintenance hangar at its Los Angeles International Airport home base is a sample of that bigness. It can shelter the largest air freighters flying today. Here, periodic inspection and routine or major overhauls are carried out by Tiger's own experienced mechanics working with the newest, the latest of superb technical equipment. Flying Tiger's fleet of air freighters are serviced to highest airline standards. Periodically, every aircraft in Tigers vast cargo fleet returns to this massive home base at LAX. LAX is the airline way of saying Los Angeles International Airport. This is the logical geographic location for Flying Tigers control and administrative center. Here, the airline and air freight specialists, men of vast experience, headquarter as they direct the operations of this biggest of air freight airlines. This is the heart of the airline. Here, every Tiger air freighter is scheduled and controlled. In this nerve center, the movement of every aircraft and flight crew is determined. 470 flight officers and 65 navigators presently make up the highly experienced crews who man the Flying Tiger air freighters. All, of course, are certificated by the FAA to highest airline standards. On this roster, their working hours and geographical whereabouts are clearly displayed at all times. Operations is but one of many vitally important departments at this headquarters. Top executives, air freight specialists, are quartered here. Each day at 10:00 a.m. they meet in the office of the vice president of operations for a critical report which reviews the Tigers freight movement of the past 24 hours. Here the performance is carefully analyzed. Here critiques are offered which constantly upgrade the dependability of the airline schedules. >> Boston's departure was on time. 30,200. From Chicago, 44,900. And in Los Angeles, early. Hartford's departure on time with 31,542,900 from Philadelphia, 37,400 to Chicago. Out of Chicago with 53,300, was in Seattle 1 hour early. >> Operations control is reporting on the flights and the stations that make up the network of routes served in the United States by the Flying Tiger Line. Tigers basic routes are located within the United States. Its great air freighters fly non-stop from coast to coast, from Newark, New Jersey and New York's JFK Airport to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle, serving almost every important market in between. In New England, Hartford, Boston. In the East, Binghamton, Buffalo, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland. In the Midwest, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, and in the West, Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. These were the air cargo routes that Robert Prescott dreamed of in the combat days when he flew with the original Flying Tigers in the China of World War II. Prescott was quick to recognize the true meaning of air freight when he and his colleagues were called upon to airlift vital supplies from India to China. It was this hard-won knowledge and experience that prompted him to call together in 1945 the pilots and mechanics with whom he had flown in combat, to invite them to join with him in pledging their money and themselves to the creation of the first all-cargo airline in the nation. Over the years, they've built an enviable record. Tigers has become the world's largest scheduled freight and contract airline. This growth has been accomplished without a cent of government subsidy. In the growth process, Flying Tiger Line has done more than any other airline to develop and improve the air freight industry. Under the direction of Robert Prescott, Tigers has held the leadership position in air freight since the company's beginning. Tigers brought professionalism to air cargo movement with an impressive list of new ideas. Tigers was the first carrier to file low air freight rates. The first to operate true non-stop transcontinental air freight schedules. First with the skyroad method of distribution to offline cities. Skyroad, a carefully integrated network of trucks, trains, and Tigers air freighters makes air freight available to shippers even though they might be located 100 miles from an airport. This is integrated transportation which successfully blends together the unique service advantages of each form of modern transport. All on a single bill of lading. No longer is it necessary to maintain huge inventories in far cities. Tiger air freight means quick, low-cost distribution for the manufacturer. Robert Morgan, president of nationwide Amco Transmissions, puts it this way. >> Our problem may not be unique, but so it seemed to us. We have more than 400 transmission repair centers strategically located throughout the United States. This means having available over 100 different transmissions and more than 2,500 parts in every shop. We needed a new concept of parts distribution and delivery that would lay our product down across the country overnight. The airlines, like Flying Tigers, after studying our problem, helped us work out the details of a plan that accomplishes the objective of overnight service. It makes possible the servicing of a center in Los Angeles faster by air from our headquarters here in Pennsylvania than it could be serviced by land transport from a San Francisco warehouse. We can do it all from one location. Also, we eliminate the costly stocking of warehouses and complicated communications problems. This has already saved more than a quarter million dollars in regional warehousing and distribution costs. It all adds up to efficiency in business, well-stocked service centers, and satisfied customers. We are convinced that air freight as handled by the specialists of Flying Tigers is one of the most positive forward steps taken by Amco since our inception. >> The far-reaching minds of Flying Tigers air freight specialists also conceived the movement of international freight by sea air. >> Aware that many shippers needed relatively fast but low-cost movement of freight from the Far East to Europe or from Europe to the Far East, Tigers developed a way to accomplish this by combination ship and plane. Again, with a single bill of lading. Merchandise is carefully and safely container packed, fully protected from the elements and vandalism, and shipped by sea from Tokyo to San Francisco. Upon arrival in San Francisco, the container is moved immediately to the Tigers terminal, loaded on the aircraft, and in a matter of hours is in New York, where it is air-lifted by connecting carrier to its European destination. Sea-Air saves 27 days in shipping time. Sea-Air means real savings in interest on dollar investment on inventory, cost of insurance, less exposure to price fluctuations. >> Tigers was the first airline to employ the advanced manifest as a part of every freight shipment function. This guarantees full knowledge at all times by all Tigers offices of the exact location of all freight. It is in fact easier to find the facts on a 1-lb freight shipment than it is to locate the whereabouts of a first-class passenger on any other airline. In the more than 20 years that Flying Tigers has been operating, there has been a constant series of new ideas that improve the value of air freight and heighten the degree of service provided the shipper. Latest in the series is the link-up with air taxi operators at key cities in the United States. Across the nation, air taxi and small cargo airlines now meet the giant Tiger cargo planes. Freight is quickly transferred to the Dart-like smaller aircraft. >> In a matter of minutes, it is again airborne and the shipments are delivered virtually to the consignee's door. Again, all this accomplished on a single bill of lading. As air freight specialists, Flying Tigers has added up this impressive list of firsts. Sea-Air Skyroad Advance Manifest and lower rates. Flying Tigers, because it is an all-cargo airline, has in fact provided the avenue for rate advantage. Tigers is the lever that forced lower rates and improved service throughout the whole field of air freight. The passenger airlines who carry freight as a subordinate activity charge less today because the all-cargo airlines, through competition, have forced them to do so. Air freight, once looked upon as simply emergency shipments, is now a way of life. From sophisticated racing cars to automobile assembly line parts to flowers and fashions to electronic equipment and all kinds of machinery because shippers often find that it is cheaper in the long run to fly it than truck it. Total cost of distribution, all the costs that go into moving goods, inventory, warehousing, insurance, customer satisfaction, capital turnover, when blended into the speed of air freight, often make it cheaper to fly the goods to market than move it by slower surface methods. Even supersonic fighters move this way. Tiger's rates and services will soon be available to even more metropolitan communities for application has been made to the CAB for permission to serve 20 more cities in the United States. Flying Tigers is a certificated domestic all cargo scheduled airline. But it has a long history of overseas and international operation. Tigers, more than 15 years ago, contracted to fly the biggest airlift ever operated by a single company. Eight flights a day between the United States, Hawaii, and Tokyo supplied the reoccupation forces of General MacArthur in Japan. Tigers was the single largest operator in the Korean airlift. Tigers airlifted more than 35,000 Yemenites to Israel. Iron Curtain refugees from Hungary rode Tiger's air freighters to Australia, England, Canada, and the United States. The adventurous career of Tigers was continued in the building of due lines early warning radar around the top of the world. Massive weights, outsize and unusual cargo became commonplace with Tigers. In Vietnam, Tigers plays the major cargo role. Each day, Tigers 707 Boeing jet freighters load vital war material at the Air Force's Norton Air Force Base in Southern California and at Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco. Tigers flies the route from California to Cold Bay, Alaska, thence to Japan, and on to Vietnam's bustling military air base at Cam Ranh Bay. This long involvement with national military programs has benefited the nation and Tigers in many ways. It has amounted to an increased experience and knowledge of large-scale air cargo movement. Knowledge that Tigers has immediately put into practice in its basic domestic operation. It is this huge fund of experience in Pacific air operations that has been a prime factor in Flying Tigers application to the CAB for the much sought-after new routes across the Pacific. Tigers is convinced that certification of an all-cargo airline on the trans-Pacific route amounts to real insurance to shippers of low-rate, high-volume air freight service and wide-ranging market penetration throughout the immense Pacific area. It will, in fact, magnify the importance of Pacific markets. The vitality of these markets is well known to Tigers, who today often find their empty military charter aircraft being used by Asiatic shippers to move plane loads of merchandise, radios, toys, electronic equipment, clothing to US markets to meet consumer deadlines. Tigers moves freight. That is all it does. Its personnel knows that freight movement is the end-all and be-all of their working day. They know that nothing is more important than the smallest package of freight. They don't think in terms of anything else because there is no anything else. That's why Tigers people meet shipping problems head on. They work with a spirit seldom found today. When weather, the natural adversary of airline schedules, brings the airports to full stop, Tigers keeps the freight moving by truck through snow-filled highways. This is Chicago's O'Hare Field. It is closed. Its runways under ice and snow. But Tigers trucks are moving freight from O'Hare to the nearest open city, and from the smaller cities to O'Hare in anticipation of the opening of the airport. A package, important to the shipper and the airline, is hand-carried to the plane. The field is finally opened. The first aircraft to depart is Flying Tigers flight 131. First off because the staff at Tigers won't settle for less. Tigers has spirit, energy, a perennial youthfulness that belies its more than 20 years of operation. It is the kind of attitude that one found on a muddy military field in China in World War II when frozen-fingered mechanics worked all night on a fighter plane to make it ready for the next morning to fly and fight again. It is a precious commodity, this attitude. Tigers seems to have a corner on it. Tigers has operated its all-cargo airline through the most exciting years of modern aviation history. They have made do with the war surplus planes of the '40s. They have progressed with the biggest and best of the reciprocal engine planes of the early '50s. They set a world standard for air cargo in 1957 when they bought $28 million of Lockheed Super H Constellation freighters, the largest order ever placed for freight aircraft. And again in 1959 when they ordered $55 million of CL-44 swing-tail freighters, again a record order and the first turbo-powered freighters to go into service. Soon Flying Tiger Line will receive delivery on the first of 17 giant DC-8-63Fs. These are the new breed of cargo aircraft. Tigers calls them the jumbo jets. An apt name for the jumbo jets will carry almost 40% more payload with resultant increase in service for the air shipper. The DC-8-63F, the jumbo, is a bold step forward. It is a quarter-billion-dollar declaration of faith in the future of air cargo by the Flying Tiger Line. And like the others, is the largest order for air freighters ever placed. It is the kind of technological advance that is matched by constant research and study by the executive staff of air freight specialists who direct Flying Tigers. Their minds are always probing the future in this highly competitive field of flying freight. They know what has happened in air cargo in the past 20 years. They realize that the next 10 years will show even greater progress and utilization of air cargo. Being intimately acquainted with this shrinking world, they are ready for the unlimited future that awaits them in their specialized field. A field where pioneering is an everyday job. A constant requirement to bring shippers in this new kind of transportation the service and merchandising profits that come from an imaginative use of the airplane as a truck of the air. A massive truck. A greater truck than man has ever known that carries three boxcar loads of freight, 110,000 lb at speeds up to 600 mph across continents across oceans anywhere in the world.