American Airlines history
Body: I choose American Airlines because one of my good friends is a Captain for American Eagle flying with their regional jet service out of LaGuardia New York. A long time back our fledgling airlines were helped by a very famous aviator Charles A. Lindberg who was flying as the chief pilot for the Robertson Aircraft Corporation which was one of two aviation companies that had contracts for air delivery of U.S. Mail. He and his pilots flew a mail delivery route between Chicago and St. Louis in a DH-4 biplane back in 1926. The Robertson Corporation he worked for was merged into the Aviation Corporation in 1929, then in 1930 this business and other subsidiaries were again consolidationed into American Airways, and in 1934 the company was renamed American Airlines Inc.
The first president of American Airlines was Cyrus Rowlett he was appointed on May 13 1934 and remained in that position until 1964, except for a period of time during World War Two, he later was named the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. In June 1936 American was the first airline to fly the Douglas DC-3 for commercial air service, and on February 16 1937 American carried it’s one millionth passenger. By the end of the decade American was the nation’s number one airline based on revenue passenger miles. In the 1940’s and 1950’s American continued to grow, this was partly due to American posting, selling and trading it’s stock in the U.S. market in 1939.
In 1944 American introduced the first domestic scheduled freight service with the DC-3 then the Douglas DC-4, DC-6A, and DC-7 were added as air freighters. During World War Two one half of Americans air fleet was turned over to the U.S. Military Airline Air Transportation Command, with this turnover of company aircraft their flight crews followed for service to the United States. The remaining planes and personnel state side had to face a increase in domestic air travel with fewer aircraft.
From 1945 to 1950 American spread its wings again by operating over the Atlantic as American Overseas Airlines AOA servicing Europe, and in 1950 merged with Pan American World Airways. 1946 brought some infrastructure for a maintenance and engineering base in Tulsa OK, this helped the airlines to boast a completely post war air fleet of pressurized planes in 1949. Another major step was how the company pioneered nonstop transcontinental flights in both directions using the DC-7. Fast forward on January 25th 1959 American was again the first to offer coast to coast jet service with the Boeing 707, and in 1962 the Convair 990 introduced fan-jet power.
Through the 1960s and 1970s American increased their fleet jet fleet by adding Boeing 727 (1964), and Boeing 747 (1966), and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10
