TWA Celebrates 40th Anniversary Of Coast-to-Coast Air-Rail Service
Credits
Forty years ago, on July 7, 1929, "The Airway Limited" chugged out of New York's Pennsylvania Station on the first leg of a combined air-rail journey for 20 people that slashed transcontinental travel time from 100 to 48 hours. A new era of fast transportation was born.
Launched by Transcontinental Air Transport (now Trans World Airlines) and the Pennsylvania Railroad (now Penn Central), this historic transportation milestone as the turning point for commercial aviation passenger service. This month, the two companies are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the event.
In ceremonies last week in Penn Central Station (the name was changed when the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads merged) Gloria Swanson, who participated in the eastbound inaugural at Los Angeles in 1929, unveiled a plaque to commemorate the event. Guests were served box lunches, as were air passengers 40 years ago, in two 1929-vintage railroad dining cars.
Alfred E. Perlman, president of the Penn Central, and Charles C. Tillinghast, Jr., chairman and chief executive officer of TWA, described the roles played by their companies in the transcontinental adventure.
Commemorative plaques also were unveiled at Columbus, Amarillo, Kansas City, Albuquerque and Los Angeles—cities near the transfer locations and the West Coast terminal.
What was it like July 7, 1929 when, after months of planning by Charles Lindbergh and others, this air-rail adventure started?
Colonel Lindbergh, at 27 a national hero, was hired as technical advisor to TAT. He plotted the fledgling airline's cross-country routes, inspected airport and weather stations and set up standards for equipment and personnel. In fact, he was so closely identified with the airline that for a number of years TWA was known as "The Lindbergh Line."
Amelia Earhart joined TAT later as assistant to the general manager, in charge of making flying attractive to women.
Pre-1929 flying was rough business. Passengers flew with the mail, and a pilot was usually disgruntled to find he had a passenger. And the passenger, in among the mail bags, was lucky if he had a candy bar to nibble on his flight.
New Word: Service But now passengers were to get prime consideration. That was one of the great novelties of the new air-rail service. Riding overnight from New York on the Pennsylvania Railroad, passengers boarded new Ford Tri-Motor planes at
Columbus, Ohio and flew to Waynoka, Oklahoma, making intermediate stops at Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City and Wichita.
From Waynoka the Santa Fe Railroad carried them to Clovis, New Mexico. At Clovis, the passengers once again boarded a Ford Tri-Motor for their flight to Los Angeles, stopping enroute at Albuquerque, and Winslow and Kingman, in Arizona.
The service and decor were previously unheard-of. A courier, as he was called, attended to the passengers' every whim, serving them tea and a hot lunch aloft on lavender place mats with gold-plated flatware. Seats reclined. For greater comfort and legroom, there were only 10 seats instead of 16 that could have been installed.
The combined air-rail one-way fare was $351.94 compared to today's one-way fare of $145 for nonstop coast-to-coast jet speed and comfort.
On inaugural day, Colonel Lindbergh entered the office of California Governor C. C. Young in Los Angeles, where a telegraph loop had been rigged and contact had been made with New York.
At 6.05 p.m. (EST), Lindbergh, "after staring fixedly at his wrist watch a moment," pressed the telegraph key that flashed the signal across the country to Pennsylvania Station in New York for "The Airway Limited" to pull out.
Newspaper accounts said: "Quiet, concise, confident, the youthful colonel sat at the edge of the governor's desk while the telegraph key, over which he had just dispatched the starting signal, clicked and sputtered. Colonel Lindbergh smiled and nodded, then said earnestly: 'As people begin to use the airlines, they will discover that speed, safety and comfort are to be found in the air. They will discover such a saving in time that they will make use of air transportation whenever possible or wherever it is available.'
Meanwhile in New York a ceremony was taking place in Pennsylvania Station. Following the customary ceremonial speeches, Miss Earhart, a passenger on the inaugural trip, christened "The City of New York," the TAT Ford TriMotor which had been on exhibition in the station.
Bearing plaques and messages from Mayor Jimmy Walker to the mayors of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the 20 air-rail travelers boarded the train for their overnight trip to Columbus. As the train pulled out, The Sunrise Trail Band of the Long Island Bailroad struck up "California Here I Come."
More than 5,000 people braved a steady drizzle the next morning in Columbus to watch the transfer at Port Columbus, the city's then new municipal airport. Following dedication ceremonies, two TAT planes, "The City of Columbus" and "The City of Wichita" roared off on the first air leg of the trip.
Watching the takeoff were Henry and Edsel Ford, manufacturers of the 10 Tri-Motors in TAT's fleet.
The diary of one of the passengers reveals what "luxury" airliners were like in 1929. Describing the takeoff, she said, "The din is terrific. Every throb of the propeller as it beats the air is like a thousand snare drums in your ears.
But the courier comes forward to give you little pieces of cotton to stuff in your ears."
Flying at 5,000 feet and 100 mph after leaving St. Louis, the passengers were served a cold lunch, hot consomme and Missouri strawberries and shortcake. "A special treat from the Mayor of St. Louis," read a little card.
Lindbergh Flies Over Kansas City she looked out and saw the airport "virtually in the center of town. What a boon it would be if all cities could bring the field so close to the center of things. It is a problem the airlines will have to face in the future."
In Los Angeles, the day after the train passengers had set out from New York, Colonel Linbergh was ready to fly TAT's first regularly scheduled eastbound flight.
At the airport at 7 a.m. on July 8, Colonel Lindbergh, in order to conform to a Department of Commerce ruling that forbade pilots from carrying passengers until they had made 10 flights in the particular type of ship to be used, took off 10 times, shuttled over the field and made 10 perfect landings.
"The City of Los Angeles" was christened by Mary Pickford with a bottle of grape juice (prohibition was still in force) shortly before Colonel Lindbergh took off for Winslow, Arizona to the cheers of 30,000 on-lookers. Among his passengers was his bride, Anne Morrow Lindbergh.
The next day when the westbound passengers from New York arrived at Winslow, Colonel Lindbergh piloted one of the planes back to Los Angeles. Another great crowd was gathered as he taxied the ship up to the grandstand.
While passengers told reporters, "We've never been more comfortable or less wearied," Gloria Swanson christened the plane from New York with another bottle of grape juice.
A Prophecy In two days and two nights, 20 people in two airplanes had crossed the continent—2,343 miles by air and 970 miles by rail. No other scheduled passenger carrier had ever done that before.
And so it all began with fanfare, signals flashing across the country and movie stars. A few years later, the diary writer noted, "If we can believe what they are telling us about new planes coming along, someday another young Lindbergh, flying in a fast jetpropelled or rocket ship, will make the trip so fast that he'll get there before he started." And so it may be in the seventies—because of the three-hour difference on the clock, a supersonic transport will arrive in Los Angeles before it leaves New York. —DAV E VENZ