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Probably not many people who were around then are left, and maybe most people had their own troubles to worry about in 1934.
In 1930, during the Hoover administration, the Postmaster General was Walter Folger Brown. He claimed to be dissatisfied with the cost and effectiveness of air mail service of the time. He was able to ram-rod legislation through Congress to give him the power to overhaul the air mail system with little interference. He went about this by granting favorable circumstances to certain larger airlines of his choice. Some of Brown's opponents claimed the terms of this arrangement were too favorable to the airlines. However the arrangement was made, air mail service was improved.
In 1934, after Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, Democratic senator Hugo Black caused an investigation into the air mail arrangement, bringing into question legal and ethical points involved. Shortly after, Roosevelt's Postmaster General, James Farley, with Roosevelt's approval, suspended all existing air mail contracts in the public interest. At that point, the Post Office Department requested that the US Army Air Corps take on the job of flying the air mail nation-wide.
The Army took on this project with a certain "can do" attitude. Unfortunately during the years between WW1 and WW2, the military services were seriously underfunded. The Air Corps was no exception. When they took on the task of delivering the air mail in 1934, they had obsolete, open cockpit planes, and most of these lacked instruments for flying in bad weather or at night. There was a shortage of radios, and of the radios on hand for use, the longest range radio was 30 miles. Over half of the pilots used in AACMO (Air Air Corps Mail Operation) were junior reserve officers with less than two years of flying experience, and of all the pilots, most had very little or any experience flying in bad weather or at night. Only two had instrument flight experience. Most of these officers had no experience with any aspect of commercial flight.
The results of the AACMO were predictable. The Army flew the mail for about three months. During this time, there were 66 crashes, resulting in 11 fatalities (or 12, depending on the source read). The program was suspended in mid-1934. WW1 flying ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker called the program "legalized murder."
After the suspension of AACMO, the air mail was contracted out again to commercial airlines, but under much stricter controls.
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