Once airmail became
accepted, the government transferred airmail service to private companies.
Representative Clyde Kelly of Pennsylvania sponsored the Contract Air Mail Act
of 1925, commonly referred to as the Kelly Act. This was
the first major step toward the creation of a private and profitable U.S.
airline industry.
The Lawson C-2 visited Bolling Air Force Base in September 1919, on its way from New York to San Francisco.

The Aeromarine AS-1 in the early 1920s.

Walter T. Varney launches contract airmail service between Pasco, Washington, and Elko, Nevada, via Boise, Idaho, marking the true beginning of U.S. commercial air transportation and the birth of United Airlines.

Interior of Ford Trimotor with "club" type cabin furnishings.

The Pioneering Years: Commercial Aviation 1920 – 1930

According to
the aviation historian Roger Bilstein, it is uncertain when the
first scheduled passenger service in the United States began. Silas Christofferson carried
passengers in 1913 by hydroplane between San Francisco and Oakland
harbors. In 1914, the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat line carried passengers between Tampa and
St. Petersburg, Florida, using a Benoist flying boat. The service was quite successful .

After the war
ended, Alfred W. Lawson built the first multiengine airplane designed
exclusively for passengers—the Lawson C-2 in 1919. But surplus military
aircraft were a lot cheaper to buy than the C-2, and his plane did not sell.
Next, Lawson built a “jumbo” airliner, the L-4, that carried 34 passengers and
6,000 pounds (2,722 kilograms) of mail. This giant plane, however, crashed on
its first test flight, ending further development.

In 1920, a Florida
entrepreneur, Inglis Uppercu, began to offer international passenger flights
from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba. He later added other routes including
flights between Miami and the Bahamas and soon between New York and Havana,
picking up passengers at stops along the way. He even extended his service to
the Midwest, flying between Cleveland, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan. His
Aeromarine Airways' 15 flying boats, dubbed “airborne limousines,” made more
than 2,000 scheduled flights and carried nearly 10,000 passengers. But one of their
planes crashed off the coast of Florida, four passengers drowned, and
Aeromarine Airways went out of business in 1924.

It was the Post Office
and airmail delivery that gave the commercial airlines their true start. In the
early part of the 20th century, the Post Office had used mostly railroads to
transport mail between cities. By 1925, only seven years after the first official airmail  
flight, U.S. Post Office airplanes were delivering 14 million letters and
packages a year and were maintaining regular flight schedules. Airmail appealed
particularly to bankers and other businessmen who regularly began to use it to
move checks and financial documents more quickly, reducing the “float” on
checks and the length of time that funds were idle and unavailable for use.

Once airmail became
accepted, the government transferred airmail service to private companies.
Representative Clyde Kelly of Pennsylvania sponsored the Contract Air Mail Act
of 1925, commonly referred to as the Kelly Act. This was
the first major step toward the creation of a private and profitable U.S.
airline industry.

After the Kelly Act
passed, private companies bid on feeder routes that supplemented the
transcontinental air route. This airway had expanded during the nine years that
the Post Office had transported mail by air. Now the Post Office awarded
contracts to private companies, and these companies would later become
transportation giants.

New York -
Boston— awarded to Juan Trippe, founder of Pan American Airways.

Chicago - St.
Louis—won by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation with Charles Lindbergh as
their chief pilot. Robertson would become part of American Airlines.

Chicago -
Dallas— went to National Air Transport owned by Clement M. Keys, a
financier. Keys would eventually develop National Airlines and own 46 other
aviation properties.

Elko, Nevada -
Pasco, Washington—won by Walter T. Varney, who would later merge with
United Air Lines.

Salt Lake City -
Los Angeles—awarded to Harris “Pop” Hansue of Western Air Express, which
would merge into Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA).

Later, after Henry
Ford had purchased the Stout  
Metal Airplane Company in 1925 and formed the Ford Air Transport Service,
he was awarded the Chicago-Detroit and Cleveland-Detroit routes. He also
produced the all-metal Ford  
Trimotor, called the “Tin Goose.” After three years carrying the mail, Ford
returned to manufacturing.

In 1926, President
Calvin Coolidge appointed a board to develop a national aviation policy,
selecting Dwight Morrow as chairman. Morrow was a senior partner in J.P.
Morgan's bank and later would become the father-in-law of Charles Lindbergh.
Morrow counseled that airlines should not be directly subsidized, but rather
supported by federal funding of a national air transportation system. Congress
adopted these recommendations in the Air Commerce Act of 1926, which authorized
the Secretary of Commerce to designate air routes, develop air navigation
systems, license pilots and aircraft, and investigate accidents.

Congress also
adopted the board's recommendation for airmail contracting by amending the
Kelly Act. With this change, the government began paying carriers according to
the weight of the mail. This was a tremendous financial boost to the airlines.

The 1920s also saw
advancements in research and training. Harry Guggenheim,
the son of a multimillionaire, an ex-navy pilot, and an aviation enthusiast,
established a foundation in the late 1920s to teach aeronautical engineers at
universities and develop flight instruments. Guggenheim also funded Western Air
Express with $180,000 in an experiment to see if airlines could profit from
passenger fares alone. Western flew 5,000 passengers from Los Angeles to San
Francisco in its first year with a flawless time and safety record. Yet, the
company could not make enough money to survive without airmail subsidies.

Repeatedly, the
dreamers in commercial aviation would invest in ventures that failed. However,
when Charles A. Lindbergh made his famous solo flight to Paris in May 1927, his
flight set off a Wall Street rush to invest in aviation. His accomplishment
fueled the development of commercial aviation. Between 1927 and 1929,
investments in aviation stocks tripled.

By the end of the
1920s, travelers could still cross the country faster by train than by air.
Airplanes had to fly around mountains, could not fly safely at night, and had
to land frequently to refuel. Flying by air was uncomfortable and some
passengers wore overalls, helmets, and goggles. The airplanes were uninsulated
thin sheets of metal, rattling in the wind, and passengers stuck cotton in
their ears to stop the noise. Cabins were unpressurized—passengers chewed gum
to equalize the air pressure. Nevertheless, more and more people were flying.
The number of airline passengers in the United States grew from less than 6,000
in 1926 to approximately 173,000 in 1929. Businessmen comprised most of the
passengers, and more and more companies would pay for their employees to travel
by air.

The Ford Trimotor
5-AT was used by almost all the U.S. airlines. Introduced in 1928, these planes
could carry 14 or 15 passengers in its corrugated fuselage. It was produced
through 1932, but these planes stayed in use much longer. One Trimotor 5-AT,
built in 1929, was still being used in Las Vegas for sightseeing in 1991.

Also, at the end of
the decade, new jobs began to appear at and around airports. Warehouses
appeared and manufacturers began to build their plants closer to airports. Aeronautical schools
began to teach students who would become the designers and builders of
airplanes and the pilots and navigators who would fly them.

New technology was
appearing that would allow future expansion of commercial aviation. In
September 1929, a young U.S. Army lieutenant, James Doolittle, took off from
Mitchell Field in New York, flew an irregular course of 15 miles (24
kilometers), and landed, all without seeing anything outside of his cockpit
(the cockpit was shrouded.) He was using the first instrument navigation
package, including a very accurate barometer, a Sperry artificial horizon and gyroscope, and a radio
direction beacon for landing—all the result of research at the Full Flight
Laboratory set up by Harry Guggenheim.

But despite the
advances in air travel and the aspirations of businessmen who hoped to get in
on the ground floor of a new multimillion-dollar business, airlines in the
1920s that promoted passenger-only routes lost money. Profitable passenger
airlines would not be realized until the 1930s.

—Rich Freeman

Sources and
References

Allen, Oliver. The
Airline Builders. Alexandria, Va: Time-Life Books, 1981.

Bilstein, Roger E. Flight
in America 1900 –1983: From the Wrights to the Astronauts. Revised Edition . Baltimore, Md.: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Donald, David, ed. The
Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc.
1997.

Editors of
Time-Life Books. Our American Century: Century of Flight. Alexandria,
Va.: Time-Life Books, 1999.

Ethell, Jeffrey L. Frontiers
of Flight. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books. New York: Orion Books,
1992.

Legrand, Jacques. Chronicle
of Aviation. ed. Mark S. Pyle et al., Liberty, Mo.: JL International
Publishing, 1992.

Smith, Henry Ladd. Airways:
The History of Commercial Aviation in the United States. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, Inc., 1942, reissued 1965.

Solberg, Carl. Conquest
of the Skies, A History of Commercial Aviation in America. Boston, Mass.
Toronto, Canada:Little, Brown and Company, 1979.

Educational Organization

Standard
Designation (where applicable)

Content of
Standard

International
Technology Education Association

Standard 10

Students will
develop an understanding of the role of research and development and
experimentation in problem solving.

International
Technology Education Association

Standard 3

Students will
develop an understanding of the social and economic effects of technology.

National Council
for Geographic Education

Standard 1

How to use maps
and other geographic representations to acquire and process information.

American
Association for the Advancement of Science

N/A

Funding
influences the direction of science by virtue of the decisions that are made
on which research to support.