The Origins-
On the morning of April 15, 1926, a young aviator named Charles A. Lindbergh piloted the first air mail flight along Commercial Air Mail Route 2, linking Chicago and St. Louis, in a De Havilland (Dayton Wright) DH-4B. Later that day, he and two other pilots flew three planeloads of mail from back to Chicago.
Lindbergh, who one year later made aviation history by flying solo across the Atlantic, at the time was the chief pilot of the Robertson Aircraft Corporation of Missouri. The U.S. Post Office awarded Robertson the highly coveted airmail contract for Commercial Air Mail Route 2 (CAM 2) in 1925. Lindbergh’s first flight along the route is considered by many historians to have been the first flight of American Airlines.
However, Robertson Aircraft was not the only ancestor of American. In fact, the American Airlines of the 21-century is the end product of the conglomeration of nearly eighty different companies during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The consolidation began in early 1929 when a massive holding company, The Aviation Corporation (AVCO), was formed and began acquiring young aviation companies. With some of these aviation firms came bus lines, radio stations and airport construction companies.
Pieces of the Puzzle -
Uncovering the individual histories of the scores of companies that eventually formed American Airlines is a long and tedious task. In the words of a 1935 corporate history published by American:
"Technically, the corporate structure and history of American Airlines, Inc. is very simple. Practically and in effect, however, American Airlines, Inc. represents the final step in the organization of a system created from an extremely complicated corporate structure, involving many different companies whose histories, in some cases, date back to 1921 or before. Any attempt to explain and trace completely such corporate history and structure in detail back to the organization of the first company would be difficult, if not impossible, and even if it were possible, the result would be undoubtedly be more confusing than enlightening."
So many companies moved in an out of the forming corporate structure that it nearly impossible to plot them all. In at least one case, American Airlines lawyers discovered in 1935 that AVCO had at one time owned one company that on one had ever heard of or could find any information on. However, in general five large aviation companies were combined under the AVCO umbrella to eventually form American Airlines.
Colonial Airways Corporation:
On March 16, 1923 a small aviation company called the Bee Line was formed in the Naugatuck Valley of Connecticut. Early work for the Bee Line included occasionally flying the Governor of the state and his aide — but always in separate planes.
In 1925, the Bee Line was reorganized as Colonial Air Lines and on July 1, 1926, the company inaugurated airmail service between New York and Boston along CAM 1. The Colonial system was soon expanded with the formation of Canadian Colonial (service to Montreal) and Colonial Western, which served Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and eventually Erie and Cleveland.
A Colonial Fokker tri-motor made commercial aviation history in April 1927 by completing the first scheduled night passenger flight in America from Boston to New York. Mrs. Gardiner Fiske was holder of the first ticket for this flight.
The three separate Colonial divisions were combined into a single holding company, Colonial Airways Corporation, in March 1929.
Interstate Airlines, Inc.:
Organized in June 1928, Interstate Airlines operated CAM #30 between Chicago and Atlanta starting in December 1928. Interstate became a crucial piece of the AVCO network because it further linked the Great Lakes region with Universal’s route structure in the southeast. Interstate became part of AVCO in 1930.
Southern Air Transport System:
Similar to Universal (see below) in nature, Southern Air Transport was a collection of aviation companies which served an area that stretched from Atlanta to El Paso.
St. Tammany-Gulf Coast Airways (eventually changed to simply Gulf Coast Airways) started operations between Atlanta and New Orleans on August 20, 1927. In 1928, Gulf Coast became Gulf Air Lines and added service to Houston. Meanwhile, a Texas bus operator, Temple Bowen organized Texas Air Transport in late 1927 and was awarded airmail contracts for routes between Dallas and Galveston and Dallas and Brownsville. Texas Air Transport eventually expanded its service to include San Antonio and El Paso. In 1928, Tennessee businessman A.P. Barrett purchased Texas Air Transport and placed a young accountant, C.R. Smith in charge of the airline’s financial books. [For more information on C.R. Smith, click on "Who Was C.R. Smith?"]
In 1929, Barrett purchased Gulf Coast and a number of other small regional aviation companies and on February 11, 1929, combined his various holdings into a single company, Southern Air Transport.
Universal Aviation Corporation:
Formed by a group of bankers from Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Chicago in 1928 Universal is one of the most important of the many companies that became American Airlines. Universal originally owned just five airplanes and served only one route between Chicago and Cleveland. However, with war chest of nearly $2,300,000, Universal began to expand rapidly.
On December 31, 1928, Universal purchased Robertson Aircraft in St. Louis and Northern Air Lines, which operated a route linking Chicago and the Twin Cities (St. Paul and Minneapolis). Universal then added Continental Airlines to its growing family. Continental operated CAM 16 between Cleveland and Louisville with additional service to Akron. Next came the original Braniff Air Lines. First organized in May 1928 by two brothers, Tom and Paul R. Braniff, Braniff Air Lines operated between Tulsa, Oklahoma City and the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth. The last airline added to the Universal system was Central Airlines which operated Stinson Detroiters between Tulsa and Wichita, Kansas, with a later connection to Kansas City.
Universal is an important piece of the American Airlines story for two main reasons. First, through its expansion, Universal created the crucial mid-continent segment of American’s first trans-continenal route. Secondly, Universal was the first airline in the United States to offer the travelling public luxurious air/rail coast-to-coast service. Inaugurated on June 14, 1929, passengers could travel from New York to Los Angeles in just 67 hours. The trip started on the New York Central Railroad in New York City. This train took passengers as far as Cleveland. They then boarded a Universal Fokker 10A tri-motor that flew them to Garden City, Kansas, with stops in Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. Once in Garden City, these adventurous passengers boarded the Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe Railroad, and finished the voyage into Los Angeles by train.
Embry-Riddle Company:
One of the smallest company involved with the formation of American Airlines, Embry-Riddle was perhaps the most important. The creation of John Paul Riddle and T. Higbeen Embry, the Embry-Riddle Company sold and maintained aircraft, operated a flying school, an air taxi service and the Cincinnati airport. In late 1927, the company was awarded an airmail route that connected Cincinnati and Chicago. Embry-Riddle raised nearly $90,000 in operating capitol, but soon need outside backing to continue its operations.
The original Embry-Riddle flying school eventually became the famed Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Now with two main campuses in Arizona and Florida, Embry-Riddle has been described as the "Harvard of the skies."
AVCO and American Airways-
By late 1928, the Embry-Riddle Company, though successful, needed additional operating funds to continue its services. The Curtiss Company approached Embry-Riddle with an offer of financial support if Embry-Riddle stopped selling Fairchild aircraft and instead became a Curtiss aircraft dealer. Not wanting to loose a successful partner, Fairchild countered Curtiss’s offer. The directors of Fairchild Aviation created a new subsidiary company — The Aviation Corporation — to finance Embry-Riddle and a host of other aviation companies in the Great Lakes area. Thanks to the aviation craze created by Charles Lindbergh’s 1927 trans-Atlantic flight, the AVCO had no problem raising more than $35,000,000!
With this deep war chest, AVCO bought up its parent company, Fairchild, Embry-Riddle and dozens of other aviation companies across the country. By the end of 1929, nearly ninety aviation firms (or companies with a name that sounded like it had something to do with aviation) had become part of the AVCO empire. These firms included the Colonial Airways Corporation (with three airlines), Interstate Airlines, Embry-Riddle, Southern Air Transport System (two airlines) and the Universal Aviation Corporation (six airlines).
AVCO’s interests became so tangled and confused that AVCO’s directors were forced to create some order from the chaos that was their organization. Each of the air carriers and their parent corporations had their own managers, presidents and board of directors. In order to bring some control to this situation, AVCO set up a stock swap in early 1930. Under the terms of this swap, all of AVCO’s subholding companies were sold to a single company, American Airways, in return for shares of common stock in new company. All of the subholding firms, with the exception of Embry-Riddle, agreed to the deal and on February 1, 1930 American Airways was incorporated.
The Last Step: American Airways to American Airlines -
Through their frenzied purchases by the end of 1929, the directors of AVCO had managed to put together a nearly complete, if confusing, trans-continental air route. Passengers wishing to fly American Airways from New York to Los Angles had a number of routing options on more than a dozen different operating air carriers, all operated under the American Airways’ umbrella. These carriers used a dizzying array of different aircraft and their schedules where hardly coordinated. All in all, one had to be adventurous to travel from one side of the country to the other on American Airways in 1930. However, once the formation of American Airways was finished efforts were made to clean up the company’s route structure and to pare down the aircraft fleet to a few standard types.
The first president of American Airways was Frederick G. Coburn. In March 1932, Coburn stepped aside and Lamotte T. Cohu became president (Cohu later became president of TWA for period in the early 1950s). Cohu continued the effort to rationalize American Airways’ operations, but a new member of AVCO’s board of director’s, E.L. Cord, soon challenged him.
E.L. Cord, owner of the famous Auburn Motor Company, founded two airlines, Century and Century Pacific, that competed with American Airways in both the Great Lakes region and on the West Coast. However, Cord’s airlines were unable to win airmail contracts (the lifeblood of airlines in this period) and so he sold out to American Airways in April 1932. Cord and Cohu fought for control of AVCO and Cord emerged as the victor in March 1933.
Under Cord’s control, American Airways strengthened its route structure between New York and Chicago. By purchasing the Transamerican Airlines Corporation, American Airways added a direct route from Buffalo to Chicago, as well as amphibious service that connected the waterfronts of Detroit and Cleveland. However, while these steps were being taken, events in Washington D.C. were taking place that would have a profound effect on air transportation in the United States and on the future of American Airways.
In late 1933, Senator Hugo L. Black launched an investigation into the air mail contracts held by the nation’s airlines. These contracts, which meant life or death for an airline, had been organized and controlled by Postmaster General Walter Brown. Brown was a very aeronautical minded man and had made great, and sometimes unpopular, efforts to nurture the United States’ fledgling air transportation system. The end result of Senator Black’s investigation was that President Roosevelt cancelled all existing air mail contracts on February 9, 1934 and handed over air mail service to the U.S. Army Air Corps.
Though caught off guard and ill-prepared for its new assignment, the Army Air Corps did a valiant job of filling in for the airlines. However, a series of fatal accidents and growing political pressure forced President Roosevelt and the new Postmaster General James A. Farley to open a new round of bidding for air mail contracts. There were, however, some new rules.
These rules stipulated that no company bidding for an airmail contract could be affiliated with an aircraft manufacturing company. In effect, the massive aeronautical holding companies of the day (including AVCO) had to be broken up. Since, AVCO owned American Airways, Lycoming Manufacturing Company, an aircraft engine firm, and Stinson Aircraft, AVCO would have to divest its interest in American Airways. Furthermore, the new regulations on bidding for airmail contracts stated that no airline which had held an airmail contract during the Walter Brown era could bid for a new contract.
In order to regain its needed air mail income and to avoid the new bidding restrictions, AVCO had to sell American Airways to a new, independent company. Thus, on April 11, 1934 American Airways became American Airlines. Through the air mail contract bidding process the new American Airlines won back basically all of the air mail contracts that old American Airways had held. There were some changes to the American route system however. While American would longer serve Atlanta or the southeast, American’s received a new, more direct trans-continental route.
The biggest outcome of the new air mail contracts, however, was not American’s new routes, but rather its new president. While E.L. Cord retained control of American Airlines during its transition from American Airways, he quickly stepped aside and turned over control of the new company to C.R. Smith, who had risen through the ranks of AVCO to the post of vice president for the Southern Division of American Airways. C.R. Smith took over control of American Airlines on October 26, 1934 and except for a few years during World War II, did not leave the helm until 1968.
On April 15, 1926, Charles Lindbergh flew the first leg of the first round trip Chicago to St. Louis airmail flight. Flying the airmail was a dangerous business and Lindbergh had to jump from more than one aircraft because of weather or mechanical difficulties. This flight is considered to have been first start of American Airlines’ long history.
This shot illustrates the Southern Air Transport lobby at Love Field, Dallas circa 1929. Most of the people in the picture are not passengers but Southern employees (and their family members) who posed just for this image. 1930.
One of the more unique airline operations that became part of the American family was the Transamerican Airlines Corp.’s amphibious service from the Detroit River to Cleveland. The single-engine Keystone-Loening Air Yacht made this flight in only 55 minutes. Transamerican Airlines was purchased by American Airways in 1932 and helped to establish American’s presence in the Great Lakes region.
This shot of the Robertson Aircraft ramp at Lambert Field, St. Louis was taken sometime in the late 1920s. Robertson Aircraft was one of the larger aviation businesses at the time. Robertson flew airmail routes, repaired aircraft and ran flight schools. Universal Air Lines was a holding company which controlled dozens of aviation based companies across the nation. Universal Air Lines became part of the Aviation Corp. in 1929. The Aviation Corp., in turn, became American Airways on Jan. 25,
The wooden Fokker F-10A was the flagship type for American Airways in 1930. For its time, the F-10A was a remarkably capable aircraft. American Airways used these aircraft to provide coast-to-coast service. Notice the early American Airways logo on the tail of the aircraft. The search light beacon motif was used because American Airways used lighted air routes to connect Texas with California.