Airways

Airways

Every year, millions of passengers are transported about the country in great air liners. At many fields, hundreds of planes land and take off every day. Already the traffic in the air above our land is huge, and it continues to grow. How is this traffic to be managed so as to avoid collisions, keep airplanes out of storm areas, find landing space for all the ships in air when sudden bad weather breaks, keep pilots on their courses, guide them at night or when daylight visibility is poor, and otherwise provide for the safety and convenience of air travelers?

There must be uniform traffic laws for the air as well as for the sea and for our streets. The task of making and administering the rules and safeguards of air traffic is given to a government body, the Civil Aeronautics Administration, known as the CAA.

What are Airways?



The CAA has established and maintains a vast network of airways, composed of many different kinds of units and manned by many different kinds of experts. Growing rapidly, this great network by 1947 had come to include 300 range stations, 500 position markets, 2,000 beacons, 400 communication stations, 23 large airway traffic control centers. The whole system is knit to gather by 75,000 miles of teletype and telephone lines.