Douglas Daily Dispatch

:Welcome to Fliers Today

Douglas will welcome the entrants in the transcontinental air derby today as they drop down to check in on their race from Santa Monica, Cal., to the airport at Cleveland, Ohio, and the annual air races there. Something like three score of planes will visit the Douglas port. Among them will be some of the leading figures in aviation in the United States. They will be here but a brief period, merely long enough to break bread and accept the hospitality of the city.

The event of receiving and sending away the contestants promises to be the largest in the history of the local airport. This is the third year that the fliers have stopped in Douglas on their way across the country in the derby contest. It will make the fourth time that a field of fliers has been checked at the local port as there were two derbies in 1930, one for men and one for women.

These visits by the derby fliers are a helpful force in getting the quality of the Douglas airport known to the aviators of the country. From the personal visits and the publicity attendant to the official checking of the fliers, there goes out definite information concerning Douglas and her flying field and its equipment. The recent neon lighting fixtures plus the new and modern hangar all have been installed since last year.

Douglas is glad to have the derby fliers come this way and stop. It is pleased that it gets this yearly recognition and the welcome to the contestants today should be as large and as cordial as it is possible to make it. There ought to be a large crowd at the port from the time the first of the fliers sets the plane down until the last one takes wing for the east.

Show the visitors that Douglas appreciates their visit and encourage them to want to return next year. These races are already guaranteed for the next five years.