“I certainly was worried,” Collins admitted.
“I’ll bet you were,” I agreed. “You might have been heading for a house or a bunch of trees or a lake. It wouldn’t be much fun to come down when you couldn’t see what was underneath.”
“Well, I didn’t mind that so much,” said the “Dog,” “but I got to worrying about meeting a bear when I landed. I had heard from more enthusiastic hunters than I, that there were a lot of them in that section.”
As it happened, he landed in a clearing unhurt and saw no bears. Just the same, he says, he hopes he won’t have to jump again—in that region.
Vidal and Collins had ideas of their own about airlines. In due course, they left T. A. T. and interested Philadelphia capital in the establishment of a different sort of operation between New York and Washington. It was to be an hourly service with ten round trips a day, the first of its kind ever attempted over such a distance.
The plans were really daring when it is remembered that this two-hundred-mile stretch is as well served by ground transportation as is any in the world. “You won’t get people into airplanes when they have such good service on trains or buses,” was the warning heard most frequently in the preliminary period. However, the organization went forward with the most minute details of cost and administration worked out in advance. As unusual as the original plan was the fact that all cost estimates came true!
