Pacific Air Lines (Wikipedia)
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Pacific Air Lines (Wikipedia) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "Southwest Airways" redirects here. For the present-day low-cost carrier, see Southwest Airlines. Pacific Air Lines was a regional airline serving the Southwest Airways (1941–1958) West Coast of the United States that began operations in the 1940s under the name Southwest Pacific Air Lines (1958–1968) Airways. The company operated as a feeder airline, linking smaller communities primarily in California and Oregon with major cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. Founded largely with money from wealthy investors from the Hollywood motion picture industry, the airline was noted for employing cost-saving operational procedures and safety practices that were innovative [2] for the time. The traveling public responded IATA ICAO Callsign positively, and as passenger volume increased and PC PCA PACIFIC more locations were served, a need for bigger and faster planes eventually resulted in adding modern Founded 1941 aircraft to the fleet during the 1960s. However, the December 2, 1946 mid-60s were a troubled period for the company; a Commenced (renamed Pacific Air fatal crash in 1964 caused by a suicidal gunman was operations followed by a sharp decline in net income two years Lines, March 6, 1958) later, and in 1967 an unconventional ad campaign caused discord between stockholders and executives. 1968 (merged with Bonanza Air Lines and The controversy subsided after a management shake- Ceased operations West Coast Airlines to up, but the name Pacific Air Lines passed into history form Air West) in 1968 when market conditions resulted in a merger with Bonanza Air Lines and West Coast Airlines, San Francisco Hubs forming Air West. International Airport Contents Fleet size 40 Destinations • 1 Southwest Airways era (1941–1958) o 1.1 Founding and wartime operations San Francisco Headquarters o 1.2 Start of scheduled service International Airport [1] o 1.3 No-frills spirit and quick turnarounds John Howard Connelly o 1.4 Pioneering instrument landings Key people o 1.5 Crash of Flight 7 Leland Hayward o 1.6 Fleet expansion • 2 Pacific Air Lines era (1958–1968) o 2.1 Turboprop transition o 2.2 Skyjacking attempt o 2.3 Crash of Flight 773 o 2.4 Turbojets prove uneconomical o 2.5 Controversial ad campaign • 3 Merger Southwest Airways era (1941–1958) Southwest Airways 1940s logo 1 Founding and wartime operations In early 1941 Air Service veteran John Howard "Jack" Connelly and noted Hollywood agent/producer Leland Hayward formed a business partnership that five years later would evolve into a scheduled commercial airline. Neither man was a stranger to aviation; Connelly was also a former test pilot, airplane salesman, Civil Aeronautics Administration instructor pilot, and inspector for the 1930s-era Soviet Union. Hayward was an active private pilot and was on the board of directors of Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA). The two men enlisted the support of commercial pilot and photographer John Swope to oversee the training of aviation cadets.[3] Together, they founded a maintenance depot for overhauling training aircraft, a wartime air cargo line, and a military pilot training complex consisting of Thunderbird Field No. 1, Thunderbird Field No. 2, and Falcon Field in Arizona.[4] By the end of World War II, Southwest Airways was the largest training contractor in the United States, and trained more than 20,000 pilots from over two dozen countries.[5] Start of scheduled service After the war Connelly and Hayward raised $2,000,000 (in 1946 dollars) from investors, including Hollywood notables such as James Stewart and Darryl Zanuck, to expand Southwest into the airline business, pending government approval.[2] They were awarded a three-year experimental charter from the Civil Aeronautics Board on May 22, 1946 for their feeder service.[6] Scheduled passenger service under the name Southwest Airways began on December 2, 1946, using plentiful and affordable war surplus C-47s, the military version of the Douglas DC-3, converted for civilian use.[7] The initial routes were situated along the Los Angeles to San Francisco corridor, including stops in Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, Monterey, and San Jose, with Medford, Oregon added later.[6] No-frills spirit and quick turnarounds Connelly serves no food ("let them bring their own"), provides no chewing gum ("we never fly high enough to need it and besides it sticks to the floor") or magazines ("takes too long to unwrap them") TIME, October 18, 1948[2] Connelly, president, and Hayward, board chairman, were the majority owners of the airline, and as such could hold sway on how the company would operate. Running on slim operating margins, Southwest Airways was a no-frills airline decades before low-cost carriers became common. To increase revenue the airline optimized ground operations to the point where a DC-3 could discharge passengers, load new ones, and begin taxiing to take off again 90 seconds after coming to a stop (adding six more minutes if refueling is required).[2] In a cost-saving move, the airline had their own pilots do the refueling instead of paying airport personnel to do it.[2] Time on the ground was reduced by keeping one engine running while a male purser hurried passengers off the plane,[2] and the DC-3s were modified to include an 'airstair', a door that doubled as a staircase for the passengers. [8] The airstair eliminated waiting for a ground crew to roll a wheeled staircase up to the plane. Pioneering instrument landings The airline's innovative spirit extended into air safety as well; in December 1947 a Southwest Airways DC-3 flying into the coastal town of Arcata, California made the world's first blind landing on a scheduled commercial airliner using Ground-Controlled Approach (GCA) radar, Instrument Landing System (ILS) devices and Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO) oil-burning units adjacent to the runway.[2] By the following year the airline had made 1,200 routine instrument landings at the often fog-shrouded Arcata airport.[2] Southwest had a fleet of ten planes by 1948, all of them DC-3s, flying between 24 California and Oregon small towns, becoming the second biggest feeder airline in the United States.[2] Crash of Flight 7 The airline flew without any fatal mishaps until the evening of April 6, 1951, when Southwest Airways Flight 7 crashed, killing all 19 passengers and 3 crew members aboard,[9] including 12 military personnel.[10] The DC-3 was flying a 20-minute route between Santa Maria, California and Santa Barbara. It was flying too low and struck a ridge in the Refugio Pass region of the Santa Ynez Mountains at a height of 2,740 ft (835 m), far below the minimum nighttime altitude of 4,000 ft (1,219 m) prescribed for the plane's route over that rugged stretch of mountains. An investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board was unable to determine why the plane's altitude was too low.[11] Fleet expansion To handle the post-war increase in passenger travel, by late 1952 the airline's inventory had grown to include include eight secondhand piston-engined Martin 2-0-2s, which were faster and carried more passengers than the DC-3,[12] and also had airstairs.[note 1] In the 1950s the airline's literature stated it was serving 33 California locales (i.e. about 24 airports), and flight timetables published by the company in the mid-1950s boasted that Southwest Airways "serves more California cities than any other scheduled airline."[13] Pacific Air Lines era (1958–1968) To better reflect the coastal territory overflown by the majority of their flights, and having called themselves "the Pacific Air Line" for many years, the company name was changed to Pacific Air Lines on March 6, 1958.[6] The corporate logo was also changed at this time from an earth-toned Thunderbird reminiscent of a Navajo sandpainting to a simpler, modernized design with bright colors. In a move possibly designed to prevent the flying public from Pacific Air Lines logo confusing the newly named Pacific Air Lines for a brand-new airline, company from March 1958 1 timetables published in 1959[14] asserted that the company was in its "17th year of scheduled service".[note 2] Turboprop transition Before the advent of the 1960s, the company had made San Francisco International Airport their corporate headquarters and hub of operations, and at about this time operations outside of California were resumed, with flights to Nevada added to the schedule. In 1959 the fleet of airplanes was increased with the addition of the first of fourteen secondhand pressurized Martin 4-0-4 airliners, [12] and Pacific's first non-piston-engined aircraft, the turboprop- powered Fairchild F-27 (a U.S.-built version of the Fokker F27 Friendship.). The reliable but slow and unpressurized DC-3s were increasingly obsolete so in 1960 a gradual phase-out of the venerable planes began; the last of thirteen operated were gone Martin 4-0-4 in Pacific Air Lines colors at from Pacific's fleet by mid-1964,[15] and the last Martin 2-0-2s were Camarillo, California, January 3, 2008. A retired in March 1964.[16][17] lowered airstair is seen below the tail. Skyjacking attempt The first U.S. skyjacking attempt was aboard a Pacific Air Lines plane on the ground at the Chico, CA airport on July 31, 1961. The pilot and a ticket agent were shot, however the assailant was overpowered by the copilot and passengers while the plane was still on the ground.[18] Crash of Flight 773 Main article: Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 On May 7, 1964 Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashed near San Ramon, California.