Cross-Country Air Travel: The Beginning

Cross-country travel by plane?  By the early 1920s, dreamers knew that one day people would fly across the country. The questions were when, how, and would it be safe? 

As early as 1918, the post office started using planes to transport mail. These trips were short hops. Soon, young men started hanging out near the airfields begging to ride along. The extra rider usually sat on the mail bag or squeezed in behind the pilot. This was the very beginning of passenger air travel.

As manufacturers began to make larger planes, ticketed passengers were added for short flights. Flights were bumpy and noisy, but people were excited about the new adventure and the reduced travel time. 

But there were problems. Planes had to refuel frequently, and all flying was dependent on the weather. Bad weather brought all flights to a screeching halt.

Night-flying was also difficult. The post office permitted some routes to be flown at night, but it was a high-risk undertaking. The planes in the late 1920s had no navigational tools. Pilots who flew when it was dark did so using what was known as “contact flying.” The method required keeping the ground in view from the cockpit and following landmarks. (In rural areas, local people painted rocks with white arrows and lettering to help pilots along.)  Bonfires were also used to help pilots navigate at night.

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“Fly By Day, Ride the Rails at Night”

In 1928, financier and Curtiss Aeroplane president Clement Melville Keys (1876-1952) had a new idea. He started a company called Transcontinental-Air-Transport. Keys knew the government paid well for airmail contracts. It was his initial plan to go after the postal contracts using both planes and trains to move the mail.

In 1928, the country lacked any point-to-point system for getting across the country by air. Clement Keys felt that well-known pilot Charles Lindbergh was the man he needed to hire. Lindbergh knew planes and he knew potential flying routes.

Charles Lindbergh accepted the job and took into consideration many factors. Planes had difficulty going over mountains. Passenger airplanes could not fly at night, and all planes needed to refuel frequently. They would also be grounded if the weather turned bad.

Keeping all these factors in mind, Lindbergh mapped out the travel routes and specified where to build new airfields. As Keys and Lindbergh developed their ideas, Keys worked with several different railroads to string together routes that could work.  It became clear to them both that passenger service could be offered as well.

Original Route

As Charles Lindbergh chose locations where planes would need to refuel, this brought change to local economies. There were towns for refueling and also towns where Transcontinental Air Transport Company would need to transfer its passengers to railroad lines to avoid having to fly at night. 

Clement Keys also sought a partnership with the Fred Harvey Company. The FH Company worked with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and knew the west. They were also skilled at rail hospitality and frequently coordinated with Pullman. 

Waynoka, Oklahoma Makes History

One of the western towns that found itself suddenly on the map was Waynoka, Oklahoma. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway had recently opened a huge new rail yard. Lindbergh saw that if Keys’s company added an airport, it would be a perfect hub for the company.

In March 1929, they broke ground for what became the third-largest airplane hangar in the United States, trailing only Chicago and Los Angeles. Transcontinental Air Transport spared no expense on the finishing elements. They installed very bright lights along the landing field and added two-way communication systems between the airplanes and the ground stations. This type of communication system was new and state of the art.

The First Journey

On July 7, 1929, the first passengers—including Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne—met at Pennsylvania Station in New York City. They enjoyed dinner on the train that left Penn Station and slept in the Pullman train cars. All passengers disembarked in Columbus, Ohio. As Lindbergh planned, this spared the company the flight challenges of flying over the Alleghany and Cumberland Mountain ranges.

In Columbus, passengers transferred to a plane to fly to Waynoka, Oklahoma, arriving in the late afternoon.  After a meal at a Harvey House restaurant in Waynoka, the passengers boarded a Santa Fe train where they again enjoyed sleeping car comfort.

The next morning, they were served breakfast on the train and then transferred to another flight in Clovis, New Mexico. This flight took them all the way to Los Angeles.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, an experienced flier and pilot herself, was quoted as saying,” I am simply amazed at the detail that has gone into this T-A-T line.”

She noted that special cars took passengers from the plane to the train for the night ride. She also said that maps were given to each passenger so that he or she could more completely study the country through which they would travel.

One way fare from New York to Los Angeles was $352.00. This would be a little under $6500 today.

The Ford Trimotor

The Ford Trimotor airplane was the aircraft chosen for the T-A-T service. It was the largest civilian airliner in America at the time. Production of the plane began in 1925. It was made of corrugated metal, featured three engines, and was primarily designed to carry passengers. Within the industry, people called it the “Tin Goose.”

The prestigious Ford name made it popular with passengers and helped persuade the public that air travel was safe and practical. The Ford Trimotor plane already had a relationship with the Fred Harvey Company. Meals could be prepared to serve on the flights, and when the passengers needed to switch from rail to plane or plane to rail, they could enjoy a meal at a Fred Harvey restaurant.

Luxury?

Despite the Ford reputation, there was little that was luxurious for passengers flying at that time. Flying was faster than travel by rail, but flights were weather dependent. The Trimotor planes also had to fly at low altitudes, so flights were noisy and uncomfortable. Fliers were very likely to be bounced about by wind and weather.

But wealthy customers liked the allure of faster travel. Flying by air took one less day to cross the country than train travel. If a person could afford to have the “best” thing, then the air-rail ticket was the right purchase.

During the Flight

Because there was no pressurization at that time, the passengers heard the roaring of the motors and often smelled the exhaust. Because the cabin was so noisy, most passengers didn’t try to converse. Flight attendants communicated by gesture or by using small megaphones to make themselves heard.

Flight sickness was frequently a problem.

First Crash

On September 3, 1929, just two months after starting transcontinental rail and air service, the scheduled T-A-T Ford Trimotor airplane took off from Albuquerque. The plane was expected to land in Los Angeles later in the day. Five passengers and three crewmen were aboard.

When the flight failed to arrive in Los Angeles, search parties were formed. Company executives speculated that the plane went down in tribal territory. Native American tribe members were close at hand and started a search. They were soon joined by members of the Army and Navy. 

No sign of the plane was found until Monday, September 8. As they discovered, the plane never even made it to the New Mexico state line. It crashed near Mount Taylor, the tallest mountain in the Cibola National Forest.

The entire fuselage was crumpled, and in the cabin, six passengers were found flung forward. Two more bodies were in the cockpit.

Over the next five months, the Transcontinental-Air-Transport Company’s planes suffered two more disastrous air crashes. Everyone knew that air travel was still highly dangerous, and fewer people wanted to take the risk on the air-to-rail service at this point.

Point Proven

Like the Pony Express which lasted for only 18 months (April 1860-October 1861), T-A-T was a great experiment with a short life.

With the guidance of Charles Lindbergh and the funding of Clement Keys, the company established a route to travel from the East Coast to the West Coast in 48 hours. This was a record for that time. 

The ads for the service promised that customers could “fly by day and ride the rails at night,” and they did.

But 21 months later, something had to be done. During the first 18 months of operation, the company lost $2.7 million.

By October 1930, a merger was in place. Transcontinental merged with Western Air Express to become Transcontinental Airlines and Western Airlines. The company eventually became TWA.  

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