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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 theWest Coast of the United States that beganoperations in the 1940s under the name SouthwestAirways. The company operated as a feeder airline,linking smaller communities primarily in California andOregon with major cities such as Los Angeles andSan Francisco.

Founded largely with money from wealthy investorsfrom the Hollywood motion picture industry, the airline

was noted for employing cost-saving operationalprocedures and safety practices that were innovativefor the time.[2] The traveling public respondedpositively, and as passenger volume increased andmore locations were served, a need for bigger andfaster planes eventually resulted in adding modernaircraft to the fleet during the 1960s. However, themid-60s were a troubled period for the company; afatal crash in 1964 caused by a suicidal gunman wasfollowed by a sharp decline in net income two yearslater, and in 1967 an unconventional ad campaigncaused discord between stockholders and executives.

The controversy subsided after a management shake-up, but the name Pacific Air Lines passed into historyin 1968 when market conditions resulted in a merger with Bonanza Air Lines and  West Coast Airlines,forming  Air West.

Contents

• 1 Southwest Airways era (1941–1958)o 1.1 Founding and wartime operationso 1.2 Start of scheduled serviceo 1.3 No-frills spirit and quick turnaroundso 1.4 Pioneering instrument landingso 1.5 Crash of Flight 7o 1.6 Fleet expansion

• 2 Pacific Air Lines era (1958–1968)o 2.1 Turboprop transitiono 2.2 Skyjacking attempt o 2.3 Crash of Flight 773o 2.4 Turbojets prove uneconomical o 2.5 Controversial ad campaign

• 3 Merger 

Southwest Airways era (1941–1958)

Southwest Airwa s 1940s logo 1

Southwest Airways (1941–1958)

Pacific Air Lines (1958–1968)

 

IATAPC

ICAOPCA

CallsignPACIFIC

Founded 1941

Commencedoperations

December 2, 1946(renamed Pacific Air Lines, March 6, 1958)

Ceased operations

1968 (merged with

Bonanza Air Lines andWest Coast Airlines toform  Air West)

HubsSan FranciscoInternational Airport

Fleet size 40

Destinations

HeadquartersSan FranciscoInternational Airport [1] 

Key peopleJohn Howard ConnellyLeland Hayward

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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 scheduledcommercial 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-eraSoviet 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 pilotand photographer John Swope to oversee the training of aviation cadets.[3] Together, they founded amaintenance depot for overhauling training aircraft, a wartime air cargo line, and a military pilottraining 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 theUnited 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, includingHollywood 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 fromthe 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, usingplentiful 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 needit 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 assuch 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 coulddischarge passengers, load new ones, and begin taxiing to take off again 90 seconds after coming toa 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 wasreduced by keeping one engine running while a male purser hurried passengers off the plane, [2] andthe 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 AirwaysDC-3 flying into the coastal town of  Arcata, California made the world's first blind landing on ascheduled 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 theoften fog-shrouded  Arcata airport.[2]

Southwest had a fleet of ten planes by 1948, all of them DC-3s, flying between 24 California andOregon small towns, becoming the second biggest feeder airline in the United States.[2]

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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 militarypersonnel.[10] The DC-3 was flying a 20-minute route between Santa Maria, California and SantaBarbara. 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 bythe 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 toinclude include eight secondhand  piston-engined Martin 2-0-2s, which were faster and carried morepassengers than the DC-3,[12] and also had airstairs.[note 1] In the 1950s the airline's literature stated itwas serving 33 California locales (i.e. about 24 airports), and flight timetables published by thecompany in the mid-1950s boasted that Southwest Airways "serves more California cities than anyother 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, thecompany name was changed to Pacific Air Lines on March 6, 1958. [6] Thecorporate logo was also changed at this time from an earth-toned  Thunderbird reminiscent of a Navajo  sandpainting to a simpler, modernized design withbright colors. In a move possibly designed to prevent the flying public from

confusing the newly named Pacific Air Lines for a brand-new airline, companytimetables 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 Californiawere 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 wereincreasingly obsolete so in 1960 a gradual phase-out of thevenerable planes began; the last of thirteen operated were gonefrom Pacific's fleet by mid-1964,[15] and the last Martin 2-0-2s wereretired in March 1964.[16][17]

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 wasoverpowered by the copilot and passengers while the plane was still on the ground.[18]

Crash of Flight 773

Pacific Air Lines logofrom March 1958 1

Martin 4-0-4 in Pacific Air Lines colors atCamarillo, California, January 3, 2008. Alowered airstair  is seen below the tail.

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Main article: Pacific Air Lines Flight 773

On May 7, 1964 Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashed near  San Ramon, California. All 44 aboard theFairchild F-27 were killed when the aircraft dove into a hillside at a nearly 90 degree angle. [19]

Investigators found a gun in the wreckage, and the FBI determined that a suicidal passenger shotboth of the pilots, and then himself, causing the plane to dive out of control.[20]

Turbojets prove uneconomical

When turbojet aircraft were added to Pacific's fleet, the design of the bird that has always been the airline's symbol wastransformed into a more streamlined silhouette of a bird in flight.

On September 13, 1965, Pacific Air Lines announced that it wouldacquire six Boeing jets, leasing two immediately and placingorders for the remainder, to be delivered in early 1968.[21] The jets

were ordered during a prosperous time for the airline, but by 1966 the West Coast market wascontested by seven other airlines, and net income for Pacific dropped from $700,337 in 1965 to

$150,716,[22] chiefly because the three-engined Boeing 727 was uneconomical for Pacific's shortroutes. Two of the jets were removed from Pacific's flight schedule and temporarily leased to National Airlines.[23]

Controversial ad campaign

In 1967 the airline embarked on a controversial advertisement campaign, including a full-page ad inthe New York Times on April 28, 1967, that highlighted the fear of flying, a subject rarely emphasizedby the  commercial aviation industry. The airline had hired award-winning advertising executive andcomedian Stan Freberg for the ad campaign,[24] knowing that unconventional ideas were his forté.Under his direction print advertisements stated::

“Hey there! You with the sweat in your palms. It's about time an airline faced up tosomething: Most people are scared witless of flying. Deep down inside, every time that bigplane lifts off that runway, they wonder if this is it, right? You want to know something,fella? So does the pilot, deep down inside.[24] ”

The copy from another ad said:

“Hey there, you with the sweat in your palms. Do you wish the pilot would knock off all that jazz about 'That's Crater Lake on the left, ladies and gentlemen,' and tell you instead what

the devil that funny noise was you just heard?[25]

”To complement the ad campaign flight attendants handed out "survival kits" featuring hot-pink lunchpails containing a small security blanket,[22] a "lucky" rabbit's foot, the best-selling book The Power of Positive Thinking , and a fortune cookie containing the slogan "It could be worse. The pilot could bewhistling " The High and the Mighty ." [26] The attendants were also encouraged to exclaim "We made it!How about that!" upon landing. [24] Freberg had unfulfilled plans to paint a Pacific  Boeing 727 toresemble a locomotive, with wheels on the fuselage and a cowcatcher  on the nose.[22] Inside thecabin, passengers would have heard a recording of a steam locomotive over the loudspeakers.[22]

Matthew E. McCarthy, Pacific's chief executive and biggest shareholder, explained the campaign: "It's

basically honest. We spoof the passengers' concern, but at least we admit they have it." [22] Philip H.Dougherty, writing in the Business and Finance section of the May 1 edition of The New York Times,described the advertisements as "rather shocking". [27] Objections to the unorthodox campaign were

Pacific Air Lines Logo 1967-68

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raised at a May 1967 stockholders meeting, and two Pacific Air Lines executives resigned in the wakeof the controversy.[28]

Merger 

When the Boeing jet order was optimistically announced by the airline in 1965, it was unforeseen thata change in the business climate was on the horizon, and economic realities would dictate that someof the jets would not actually end up flying under the Pacific Air Lines banner. Stiff competition fromlarge rival Pacific Southwest Airlines was a factor in Pacific Air Lines joining forces with Bonanza Air Lines and West Coast Airlines in a three-way merger, forming Air West in 1968. Air West, later Hughes Airwest, merged into Republic Airlines in 1980, which became part of  Northwest Airlines in1987, and finally part of  Delta Airlines in 2008. At the time of the Air West merger, Pacific's fleetincluded 11 of their workhorse Fairchild F-27s, five Martin 4-0-4s, [12] and three Boeing 727s, one of which was still leased-out but returned to Air West in late 1968.[17] The last of the increasingly obsoleteMartins were not carried forward into the Air West fleet and were disposed of in August 1968. [12][29]

The two co-founders of Southwest Airways died within nine months of each other in 1971. JohnConnelly was 71,[30] and Leland Hayward was 68.