One student in a program I led spent almost all her nonscheduled hours pounding the pavement of Southeast Asia haggling over $2 T-shirts and trinkets.
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Students in such relationships spend much of their nonscheduled hours otherwise engaged, with intermittent treks to the door to pick up pizzas from Domino's, which now has locations in more than 75 countries.
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Passengers can also request to be dropped off at smaller nonscheduled stations and even request to be let out on the side of the tracks if they want, but that's usually just people going camping.
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"Both sides will explore the possibility to build a dedicated terminal for return in Kabul airport and express their willingness to carry out nonscheduled flights at the best convenient time," read a document describing the deal.
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Senator Edwin C. Johnson, president of the committee, gathered testimony from the nonscheduled airline representatives, the leadership of the CAB, independent fiscal and legal analysts, the former CAB chairman James M. Landis, and Robert Ramspeck, executive vice president of the Air Transport Association, which represented the regular carriers. After three months of hearings, Johnson presented his findings to the CAB with a formal request that the nonscheduled airlines' licenses be reinstated and the stringent measures repealed. Again, the CAB declined.
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Corpening 2015. p. 8. Earlier that year the CAB had instituted what became known as the "3 and 8 rule" which limited nonscheduled airlines' monthly flights to eight between any two U.S. cities and three on specified high-density routes.Davies 1987 p. 87.
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World Airways Flight 830 was a domestic nonscheduled passenger flight from Clark Air Force Base to Travis Air Force Base. On 19 September 1960, the DC-6, carrying American service members and dependents, collided with Mount Barrigada during the second leg of the flight, killing 80 of the 94 people on board. The disaster was Guam's deadliest aviation accident until Korean Air Flight 801 crashed on Nimitz Hill in 1997.
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Caledonian Airways Flight 153 was a multi-leg nonscheduled passenger service from Luxembourg via Khartoum, Lorenzo Marques (nowadays Maputo), Douala and Lisbon, before heading back to Luxembourg. On 4 March 1962 a Douglas DC-7C flying the route, registration G-ARUD, crashed shortly after takeoff from Douala International Airport, Douala, Cameroon in a swamp on the edge of a jungle off the airport. It is the deadliest crash of a DC-7.
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Gregg Sherwood, showgirl and best friend of Ruby, tried to discourage her from flying the night before her death. Sherwood told Ruby that if she had ten days before her Miami opening she could likely get a cancellation on a better airline.Walter Winchell, Dancer Doris Ruby Took Off For Miami By Air Despite Friend's Advice; Died, New Mexican, December 23, 1951, pg. 4. 56 people died on the nonscheduled airliner which crashed in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
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In hearings at the Capitol, representatives of the nonscheduled airlines denounced the CAB as the servant of major scheduled carriers that "have used every conceivable and questionable device to force the healthful competition of the irregular carriers out of existence", as said by James Fischgrund. One lawyer called the proposed action "wholesale injustice by the shotgun method." The representatives acknowledged that a few "bad apples" existed within the non-scheduled industry, but vociferously denied that all non-skeds purposefully violated CAB stricture and deserved a blanket punishment.
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The scheduled airlines, furthermore, had to service unprofitable routes and regions as a condition of their federal subsidies, forcing them to raise fares on their gainful flights to compensate. In November 1948 Capital Airlines, a minor scheduled carrier, won approval from the CAB to begin nightly coach service between New York and Chicago.Heppenheimer 1995 p. 127. The other scheduled carriers watched as Capital's new offering replicated the success of the nonscheduled airlines, and soon began petitioning the CAB to authorize their own low-fare lines.
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Major scheduled airlines—the likes of United, American, and TWA—were still receiving federal subsidies and airmail pay when they began lobbying the CAB to protect their interests against the upstart nonscheduled airlines. The CAB, charged originally with promoting competition to the benefit of the consumer, acceded to the airlines' demands and on 5 May 1947 enacted new regulatory measures targeting nonscheduled airlines—now termed 'irregular carriers'. The measures distinguished between Small Irregular Carriers, services operating light chartered aircraft weighing less than 10,000 pounds when fully loaded (changed in 1949 to 12,500), and Large Irregular Carriers, those flying equipment, the DC-3 for example, in excess of that weight. The small remained unrestricted, but the large carriers faced a host of new economic and safety regulations along with a warning to adhere to 'infrequent and irregular' service. The most important of the new rules was the need for a Letter of Registration in order to fly large aircraft; the CAB issued 142 of these in 1947 but stopped in August 1948 when the board began an investigation of the practices of large irregular carriers, which it accused of operating as scheduled services.
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Ventura AirConnect is an Indian nonscheduled airline operating flights in the state of Gujarat with Cessna 208 Caravan aircraft in its fleet. Initially operating flights within Madhya Pradesh, the airline shifted to Gujarat upon being acquired by a group of Gujarati diamond merchants in 2014. The airline underwent a change in ownership and had to suspend operations in 2015. After winning a contract from the Government of Gujarat to start flights in the state, Ventura AirConnect resumed operations in June 2016 and made Surat Airport its operating hub.
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Though passenger travel was never intended under the economic regulation exemption enjoyed by nonscheduled airlines, its adoption became essential to their business. Because of their low overhead and few amenities, the non-skeds were able to charge close to 40% less than the traditional airlines, with $99.00 fares from Los Angeles to New York City versus $159.00 on a standard carrier.Davies 1987 p. 88. Moreover, unfettered from timetables non-skeds could delay flights until they were full or nearly full, while scheduled airlines had to charge exorbitant prices to ensure profit on half- empty planes.
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Some of the nocturnal nonscheduled carriers attempted to evade landing fees at their destinations by covertly slipping in and out of airports in the middle of the night.Corpening 2015 p. 9. However, with the founding of the Aircoach Transportation Association, the trade association and lobbying group of the non-scheduled airlines, stricter policies of etiquette, safety, and consumer protection became standard across the industry. By the close of 1946 non-skeds had become a definite presence within the aviation industry, and they found themselves looked unfavorably upon by executives at the old established airlines.
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The west coast experienced a remarkable proliferation of nonscheduled passenger airlines, especially near Los Angeles in places like Burbank or Long Beach where land for a dirt airfield could be cheaply obtained. On the east coast Newark and Trenton in New Jersey were popular hangar bases for non-skeds, and the Miami- Caribbean circuit out of Florida was as trafficked as it was lucrative.Corpening 2015 p. 2. One route, from San Juan to New York, facilitated the mass migration of Puerto Ricans seeking opportunity on the mainland who came in numbers exceeding 6,000 each month and settled in squalid conditions in East Harlem.
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The non-skeds transported supplies across the country and the Atlantic Ocean to Rhein-Main Air Base, where the Air Force and Navy's combined fleet of C-54s was continuously engaged in airdropping necessary commodities into West Berlin. And again once the United Nations approved a US-led intervention in Korea in 1950, non-skeds took on the role of flying men and matériel to Japan, where the military transported them to the front. 50% of all cargo and personnel brought to the conflict were delivered by nonscheduled airlines, with special note going to Transocean and National Overseas Airways.
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For most the romantic venture ended in failure; many former fighter pilots found themselves unsuited to the steady cross-country cruising, the bookkeeping required to stay solvent, and the long-term maintenance. With a safety record 14-25 times worse than their scheduled counterparts, the nonscheduled companies (or 'non-skeds', as they came to be called) faced swift punishment from the CAB, which began widely shutting down operations that were found unsafe or "financially unfit".Corpening 2015 p. 1. CAB retribution was not the most immediate threat to the non-skeds' continued existence, however, and it soon became apparent there were too few contracts to support the influx of new businesses.
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According to the notes of The Conet Project, which has compiled recordings of these transmissions, numbers stations have been reported since World War I. It has long been speculated, and was argued in court in one case, that these stations operate as a simple and foolproof method for government agencies to communicate with spies working undercover. According to this theory, the messages are encrypted with a one- time pad, to avoid any risk of decryption by the enemy. As evidence, numbers stations have changed details of their broadcasts or produced special, nonscheduled broadcasts coincident with extraordinary political events, such as the attempted coup of August 1991 in the Soviet Union.The Conet Project (included booklet), Irdial-Discs, p. 59.
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The chairman, Joseph J. O'Connell Jr., replied that to comply with senator Johnson's demand "would be to condone flagrant violations of our regulations in the past and encourage disrespect for them in the future." Less than thirty days later the CAB filed its first round of criminal charges with the Department of Justice against Standard Air Lines, the company run by the nonscheduled airlines' most prominent spokesperson, James Fischgrund. The CAB accused Standard of violating its "irregular" doctrine by flying more frequently than permitted, offering a service indistinguishable from the scheduled airlines. On 21 July the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected Fischgrund's appeal and ordered Standard to cease and desist.
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Seaboard & Western Airlines and Transocean Air Lines, though spared, were censured and ordered to immediately discontinue practices not expressly approved in the CAB's regulations under penalty of dissolution. By 11 June 1950, there were 96 nonscheduled airlines left in the country. That this many remained despite a concerted effort by the CAB to put them out of business was due entirely to the Cold War. In times of national emergency the non-skeds undertook scores of cargo and passenger contracts from the military, fulfilling an essential service to the country while sustaining their enterprises. Seaboard & Western, Transocean, and Slick Airways notably aided the US Air Force in performing the Berlin Airlift in 1948–1949.
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Fate Is the Hunter is a 1961 memoir by aviation writer Ernest K. Gann. It describes his years working as a pilot from the 1930s to 1950s, starting at American Airlines in Douglas DC-2s and DC-3s when civilian air transport was in its infancy, moving onto wartime flying in C-54s, C-87s, and Lockheed Lodestars, and finally at Matson Navigation's short-lived upstart airline and various post-World War II "nonscheduled" airlines in Douglas DC-4s. On its publication, in reviewing the book, Martin Caidin wrote that his reminiscences "stand excitingly as individual chapter-stories, but the author has woven them superbly into a lifetime of flight."Caidin, Martin.
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While the individual companies retained their Letters of Registration, and therefore their monthly allowance of flights, North American Airlines sold the tickets, advertised its brand, and arranged their flights. In effect, Weiss created a conglomerate which doubled the amount of monthly flights allotted to his company and rebranded the technically disparate components with the North American Airlines logo, such that any passenger would believe they were dealing with a single entity. He then acquired more nonscheduled airlines—Twentieth Century Airlines, Trans- American Airlines, Trans-National Airlines, and Hemisphere Air Transport—to bring North American Airlines' de facto fleet to 14 DC-3s and 1 DC-4, and to ensure the "3 and 8" limit would never again strangle their business.Davies 1987 p. 87-8.
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But while the nonscheduled airlines' fares were unmatched throughout the industry, their service quality was frequently unreliable. The low-fare model required that flights be relatively full, and it was a common occurrence when flying on a non-scheduled airline for customers to learn at the airport their flight had been delayed until tomorrow so that the airline could sell more tickets. Because most companies had only a few planes and just the staff to crew them, delays as a result of weather or mechanical failure could completely incapacitate the airline, forcing it to cancel or postpone flights for which tickets had already been sold. No refunds were given on such tickets, and on one occasion the Burbank police responded to calls from a nearby airfield where an angry crowd of passengers were demanding access to an overbooked flight.
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They also defended their usefulness to the American public, arguing they provided access to air travel for the 90% of Americans who could not afford the regular carriers' fares, and inspired some degree of competition that was previously nonexistent under the CAB's tight economic controls. The New York Port Authority and, unexpectedly, the Department of Justice contributed their support to the non-skeds' cause, requesting that the CAB delay its order until the value of the nonscheduled airline industry could be reassessed. The CAB offered no such reprieve. On 14 April 1949 the CAB notified large irregular carriers they had thirty days from the effective date of 20 May to apply for interim licenses while the new order took effect. That same month the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, which had been investigating why scheduled carriers were still unprofitable despite federal subsidies of $100,000,000, turned its attention to the plight of the non-skeds.
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Under the 1938 legislation of the Civil Aviation Authority, the federal agency responsible for regulating civil aviation until 1940, all air carriers providing scheduled air service across states required an official certificate to operate, the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. The certificate demanded compliance with economic as well as safety standards, which meant all certificated companies were subject to the CAA's stringent control over fares, routes, and business practices. Nonscheduled air service, which then referred to light aircraft individually chartered to transport cargo, was exempt.Davies and Quastler 1995 p. 23. Snapping up $25,000 Douglas DC-3s, the legendary utility plane which operated in numbers exceeding 10,000 during the war, enterprising pilots established their own freight carriers with ease under the 1938 exemption.Solberg 1979 p. 328. A glut of such companies appeared—2,730 in 1946 alone according to the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), which replaced the CAA in 1940. They had such names as Fireball Air Express or Viking Air Lines, and commonly were operated by a lone individual with some money given by fellow GIs, or in rare cases a bank loan.
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The mission responsibilities of the Wing were later expanded considerably. In the following years, the 1607th Air Transport Wing assumed the additional responsibility for logistical airlift operations including unit deployment, airdrop supply, air landed supply, scheduled and nonscheduled airlift, as well as joint airborne operations and training to include the capability for airdrop of personnel and cargo. As a unit of the Military Air Transport Service, the 1607th Air Transport Wing had its share of responsibilities in major joint mobility exercises and global operations conducted during the "Cold War". Examples include: Big Slam/Puerto Pine, March 1960, was an exercise that deployed 22,000 combat Army troops and 12,000 tons of gear from stateside bases to Ramey AFB and Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station, Puerto Rico; Check Mate II, September 1961, involved the deployment of the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky to bases in Europe; Southern Express, October 1962, a NATO exercise which involved airlifting troops from central Europe to northern Greece; Big Lift, October 1963, the deployment of a full Army division from Texas to West Germany; The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962.
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