A Gift of Wings

Now this world that we live in, the world that occasionally drives us to our jumping-off places, did not particularly like this event. It did not particularly dislike it, either, but acted in the cold uncaring way that the world usually has, and began to put the screws to East Island Airways, with a certain blind curiosity, to see when it would crack.

“The cost of the airplane was the least of the expense,” said Mrs. Friede, “absolutely nothing. I’ll show you the books if you want to look at the books. I hid them.”

Kramer worked five months over the airplane with a Long Island overhaul company, recovering the fuselage, installing radios, ripping out the old interior and pleating in a new one.

“You know the expression ‘Never throw good money after bad’?” he said. “Well, we had one like it: ‘Always throw good money after bad.’ We had planned to spend some money getting the Bomber in shape, but when we got the bill, it said nine thousand dollars! Nine thousand three hundred dollars. It was unbelievable. We sometimes sat at a table in a stupor, wondering … you know … hm.” His voice trailed off, thinking about that, and the chairman of the board went on.

“Everybody, everybody warned us that we didn’t have enough capital, and one airplane was a disaster for an airline, and it couldn’t work. And they could prove it—they didn’t have to prove it, we knew this. But neither of us was making our living from it, that was one thing. And if we were putting in money that we needed to pay bills or something … ah … well, actually we were putting in money that we needed to pay bills … but the bills waited and we didn’t starve, somehow.”

When the Bomber was at last ready to fly, EIA lettered calmly on its rudder, it had cost the part

ners sixteen thousand five hundred dollars. Split, was only eight thousand two hundred fifty dollars each. But the money wasn’t lost, the savings hadn’t disappeared. East Island Airways had an airplane!

A Parlor Plane service to the Hamptons—

for not too many people.

You are invited to be a charter member of

EAST ISLAND AIRWAYS

East Island Airways is one beautiful, big, leather-lined twin Cessna. Not new. Not even very sleek (see photo). But fully FAA approved and a pampered beauty. Comfortable. The kind of no-climbing-over-passengers spaciousness that makes you think of a well-kept Packard limousine with all those miles of carpet. We depart from LaGuardia and cruise 140 mph to East Hampton in 45 minutes …

The membership fee was one hundred dollars, and the fare was fifteen dollars each way, a hundred-mile flight.

It didn’t work. Nobody joined. The world laid on its pressure curiously, listening for breaking noises.

“A lot of friends of Eleanor’s expected to ride on the airplane for nothing, I’m sure. I think when people get an ad and you’re flying, they think the outfit has a lot of money and what is one more person, more or less? In the beginning we didn’t mind, we just sort of wanted to let them know we existed.”

That was no breaking noise, and it sounded peculiar to a dog-eat-dog competitive world. Not many airlines fly passengers for nothing, just to let them know they exist.

“Business was very slow till the fourth of July, and then suddenly we started carrying a lot of people. We did everything by charter, people would call and charter the airplane. This actually worked out pretty well because we made enough friends at the beginning for that to be a busy three or four days out of the week. And there were charters to New England and Maine and so forth. We kept pretty busy.”

Odd. The steel-eyed no-nonsense practical world laid on the pressure, and the only response sounded strangely like the noise of the world, cracking a bit.

“People were always expecting it to fall down and they wanted it not to work. It’s old and it can’t be, but it does and it keeps going and they don’t know what to think, after a while. They don’t know. They wonder if maybe things that are old are better than things that are new.

“A wooden airplane does not fatigue. They’ll have problems with twin Beeches, they’ll have problems with 310s, they’ll all be in the scrap heap and they’ll be there because of metal problems, when twenty years from now the guy will say, ‘It’s going to cost you a hundred thousand dollars to fix that metal airplane of yours,’ and there’ll be the Bomber sitting next to it, kind of chuckling to itself and saying, ‘Don’t you wish you had wooden spars?’

“We were able to make enough. People would say, ‘Gee, it’s great, you must be making a lot of money,’ and I’d say, ‘Sure, sure,’ because I couldn’t go into the thing that we were in fact not making a lot of money, people wouldn’t understand.

“It was the kind of thing where you were beating the system. Everybody flying was trying to allow the passenger those fast airplanes, planes that had tremendous capability, and all the passengers got was crammed and smashed in and baggage on their noses and everything. Nobody else would think of running an airplane that old, and nobody thought it would last more than a week.

“They knew it at LaGuardia, after a while. In the beginning they couldn’t figure out what it was—it was always, ‘Say again your type aircraft?’ If we were making an IFR approach coming down the localizer at ninety knots they’d say, ‘What’s a twin Cessna doing so slow? You can fly faster than that!’ I’d say, ‘Well, I could, but I couldn’t put the wheels down.’ They couldn’t figure out this was an old old twin Cessna, not … they figured it was an old Cessna 310. ‘No, it’s an old old old twin Cessna,’ and they’d say, ‘Oh. OH! You mean them!’ ”

“Do you remember, Jimmy,” asked the chairman of the board, “we were landing and the tower said, ‘Twin Cessna on final, is that a metal-wing aircraft?’ And you said, ‘Negative. Fabric wings.’ And the guy said, ‘Gee! They sure do shine!’ ”

“Yeah. We’d be talking to a controller and he’d say, ‘Hey, I had an uncle who flew them during the war,’ and he’d say, ‘Boy …’ and at this time United would break in and want to know what time to expect clearance and the guy would be jolted back to reality.”

But money. The biggest hammer the world has to destroy companies with is money. You’ve got to bend, you’ve got to be a little bit vicious and tough if you’re going to compete, a lot vicious and tough if you’re going to be on top of the heap. East Island Airways did not choose to be either. That first summer the airline earned $2148 in passenger fares. It paid out $6529 in operating expenses. It lost, then, $4381.

That is a sign of disaster and despair, if and only if the first purpose of the company is to make money. But the whole outside world, all those business facts of life had to kind of gnash their teeth helplessly. Because East Island Airways is not run on the world’s terms, it is run on its own terms.

“I talked to Maury about it, my lawyer,” said Mrs. Friede, “and he said, ‘You’re not going to—this is a crazy investment and I hope you’re not going into it as an investment for profit.’ But he said, ‘Look. You don’t spend any money in the night clubs, you know, everybody needs his thing and if it’s an airplane, all right. You’re in a position where you can spend some money to have fun, and if this is your way, then go ahead, with my blessing. I envy you.’ ” She smiles a perfect, calm, world-defeating smile. “Profit was never the motive, thank heavens, but fun was, and in that way it was a big success. I really love the Bomber.”

Fun. When your first motive is fun, and money comes second or third, it’s pretty hard for the world to pull you down.

When destruction-through-money didn’t work, the world turned to operating problems. Weather. Maintenance. Traffic delays.