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the airport, during the hours when the control tower was not in operation, by private planes and Army aircraft. Under these circumstances it is believed that there should be continuous 24-hour operation of the control tower at the Wichita Municipal Airport. It is evident that if the control tower had been in operation on the night of May 31-June 1 the accident under discussion would not have occurred.
Even though the control tower was not in operation at the time of the accident, the accident could probably have been averted if the Braniff ground personnel had remained on the ramp until the Braniff airplane had taken off. As has already been noted, the Braniff Operations Manual expressly provided for such a procedure. If the ground personnel had followed the prescribed procedure and remained on the ramp to signal the Braniff airplane until it had taken off, Captain Boqua would have had ample notice that the Braniff aircraft was still on the field and thus would have been warned against taking off until after the Braniff plane had cleared the field.
Moreover, the interphone system which was in use at the time provided communication between the airport offices of Braniff, TWA, Civil Aeronautics Administration Communications, and the Weather Bureau. Although the airport control tower was not in operation at the time of the accident, this interphone afforded a means of communication which, if properly used, would have averted the accident. The procedure whereby Braniff and TWA notified each other by interphone only of the fact that their flights had left the ground on take-off appears, however, to have been inadequate. To operate with a proper degree of safety in the absence of control tower operation, Braniff and TWA
