Western Airlines

This article is about the original Western Airlines. See Western (airline) for information on an unrelated airline started in 2006. Furthermore, there is another unrelated airline by the name of Western Air operating in the Bahamas.

Western Airlines

IATA ICAO Callsign WA WAL WESTERN
Founded	1925
Commenced operations	April 1926
Ceased operations	September 9, 1986 (purchased by Delta Air Lines)
Hubs	Los Angeles International Airport Salt Lake City International Airport Stapleton International Airport (Denver)
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California

A new restoration of a Convair 240 sports a Western Airlines paint scheme.

Western Airlines (IATA: WA, ICAO: WAL, call sign: Western) was a large airline based in California, with operations throughout the Western United States, and hubs at Los Angeles International Airport, Salt Lake City International Airport, and the former Stapleton International Airport in Denver. Before it ceased operations it was headquartered by Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles.

History

Western Air Express

In 1925, the United States Postal Service began to give airlines contracts to carry air mail throughout the country. Western Airlines first incorporated in 1925 as Western Air Express by Harris Hanshue. It applied for, and was awarded, the 650-mile long Contract Air Mail Route #4 (CAM-4) from Salt Lake City, Utah to Los Angeles. In April 1926, Western's first flight took place with a Douglas M-2 airplane. It began offering passenger services a month later, when the first commercial passenger flight took place at Woodward Field. Ben F. Redman (then president of the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce) and J.A. Tomlinson perched atop U.S. mail sacks and flew with pilot C.N. "Jimmy" James on his regular eight-hour mail delivery flight to Los Angeles. This was the first regularly-scheduled passenger airline service in U.S. History.

Transcontinental & Western Airlines

The company reincorporated in 1928 as Western Air Express Corp. Then, in 1930, purchased Standard Airlines, subsidiary of Aero Corp. of Ca. founded in 1926 by Paul E. Richter, Jack Frye and Walter Hamilton. WAE with Fokker aircraft merged with Transcontinental Air Transport to form TWA.

General Air Lines

In 1934, Western Air Express was severed from TWA and briefly changed its name to General Air Lines, returning to the name Western Air Express after several months.

Western Airlines

In 1941 Western Air Express changed its name to Western Air Lines (WAL), which was later altered to Western Airlines.

After World War II, Western expanded into a large regional airline, introducing service on the Lockheed Constellation, Douglas DC-6, and Lockheed Electra. It's pivotal president at this time was a man named Harvey Drinkwater. Drinkwater got into a dispute with the current administration which severely hampered WAL's growth. Pressured in a famous phone call by president Eisenhower to "buy American made aircraft", Drinkwater is reported to have responded: " Mr President, you run your country and let me run my airline!" For years after this the CAB would not award Western routes, while it's competitors like United and American grew enormous. In 1967, WAL merged with Pacific Northern Airlines and in the late '60s pushed for an all-jet fleet, adding Boeing 707s, 727s and 737s to its fleet of Boeing 720s. In 1973, Western added nine McDonnell Douglas DC-10s to its fleet, marketing their wide-body cabins as "DC-10 Spaceships".

Western was headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Its major hubs were at LAX and Salt Lake City, Utah and Minneapolis/St Paul. Prior to airline deregulation, it had smaller hubs in Las Vegas, Nevada and Denver-Stapleton.

At its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, Western flew to many cities across the Western United States, and to various destinations in Mexico (Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo and Mazatlan), Alaska (Anchorage and Fairbanks), Hawaii (Honolulu, Maui and Kona), Hilo, and Canada (Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton). Western also maintained a large intrastate route structure within its home state of California as well, competing vigorously with PSA and AirCal.

In 1981, Western Airlines began international flights from Anchorage and Denver to London Gatwick Airport with a single DC-10-30 long range aircraft. As it extended its network to airports on the East Coast like Washington-Dulles, Newark International Airport and Boston-Logan, and Chicago, Western Airlines became a prominent sponsor of the Bob Barker television show The Price is Right, to try to make customers from the East more aware of its presence. In the late 1970s, Western Airlines (WAL) and Continental Airlines (CAL) agreed to merge. But a dispute broke out on what to call the new combined airline: Western-Continental or Continental-Western. An infamous coin toss occurred. Bob Six, the colorful founder of CAL, demanded that CAL be "tails" in deference to the current CAL marketing slogan:"We Really Move Our Tail for You: Continental Airlines; the Proud Bird with the Golden Tail". The coin flip turned up "heads". CEO Robert Six was so disappointed, he called the merger off.

Delta Air Lines

In the early 1980s, Air Florida tried to buy Western Airlines, but it was able to purchase only 16 percent of the airline's stock. Finally, on 9 September 1986 Western Airlines was purchased by Delta Air Lines, and was fully merged into that airline on 1 April 1987. After the merger, Delta eventually released the name Western Airlines. Delta has maintained Western's former Salt Lake City hub, and uses the Los Angeles International Airport as a major gateway to Mexico's many vacation destinations.

Incidents and accidents

• On January 12, 1937, Western Air Express Flight 7, a Boeing 247 flying from Salt Lake City to Burbank, crashed near Newhall, California, killing five of the 10 persons on board, including explorer Martin Johnson of Martin and Osa Johnson fame.
• On the night of April 20 1953, Western Air Lines Flight 636, flying the last leg of a Los Angeles-San Francisco-Oakland itinerary, descended below the prescribed minimum altitude of 500 feet and crashed into the waters of San Francisco Bay, killing eight of the ten people on board the Douglas DC-6 airliner.
• On October 31 1979, Western Airlines Flight 2605 crashed while landing at Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City, killing 72. The crew of the DC-10 had landed on the wrong runway and the jetliner impacted construction vehicles that were on the closed runway (during the attempted go-around). The closed runway was operationally lighted however, so that the Mexican workers could see what they were doing; an unsafe practice common in the third world. Another factor was that the Captain and Co-pilot were known to have been in a contentious dispute with each other all through their month of flying. Vance Turner was suppose to be the First Officer on the trip, but was removed at the last moment due to monthly hourly limits. This accident is taught as a CRM (Crew Resource Management) exercise at many airline training programs today.
• Flight 44 departed LAX on July 31, 1979. The flight landed at Buffalo, Wyoming instead of Sheridan, Wyoming. No injuries occurred and the only damage was not to the plane, but the tarmac at the airport which wasn't designed to support the weight of an airliner. The incident prompted the legal battle, and aviation landmark ruling of Ferguson v. NTSB.

Advertising

Western can also be noted for contributing to popular culture with its 1960s advertising slogan, "It's the oooooonly way to fly!" Spoken by the Wally Bird, an animated bird hitching a ride aboard the fuselage of a Western airliner, and voiced by veteran actor Shepard Menken, the phrase soon found its way into animated cartoons by Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera. Another famous advertising campaign by the airline centered on Star Trek icons William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Some of their last TV ads, shortly before merging with Delta, featured actor/comedian Rodney Dangerfield.

During the 1970s, they promoted themselves as "the champagne airline" because champagne was offered free of charge to every adult passenger over 21 years old. (As an aside, actor Jim Backus uttered the "Only way to fly!" phrase while piloting an airplane, while somewhat inebriated, in the film It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.)

Western Airlines was also famous for its "Flying W" corporate identity and aircraft livery. Introduced in the mid-1970s, the unique color scheme featured a large red stylized "W" which fused into a red cheatline running the length of an all-white fuselage. This new corporate identity was the subject of litigation by Winnebago Industries, which contended the new "Flying W" was too similar to its own stylized "W" logo. In its final years, Western Airlines slightly modified its corporate identity by stripping the white fuselage to bare metal, while retaining the red "Flying W" (albeit with a dark blue shadow). This color scheme was also affectionately known as "Bud Lite" due to its resemblance to a popular beer's can design.

Western Airlines was a favorite first class carrier for Hollywood movie stars and frequently featured them in it's on board magazine: "Western's World". Marilyn Monroe, and many silver screen actors were frequent flyers and the airline capitalized on it. Western had a famous flyer out of Seattle: Captain "Red" Dodge. Red worked previously as a helicopter test pilot, and got involved with CIA flying in his later years when he wasn't flying as Captain on the DC-10. The movie "Breakout" starring Charles Bronsen was based on his daring airlift of a CIA operative out of the courtyard of a Mexican prison. The Mexican government tried to extradite Dodge back to face the jailbreak charges. Red became wealthy leasing brand new government storage units with unlimited government business but never again flew to Mexico.

Fleet

Western Air Lines fleet in 1970

Aircraft	Total	Orders	Notes
Boeing 707-300	5	0
Boeing 720	29	0
Boeing 727	6	0
Boeing 737-200	30	0
Lockheed L-188 Electra	5	0
Total	75	0

References

Bibliography

• Pearcy, Arthur. Douglas Propliners: DC-1 – DC-7. London: Airlife, 1995, p. 14. ISBN 1-85310-261-X.

External links

• Historical timetables and route maps
• Historical timetable covers
• Salt Lake City International Airport
• Early Aviators
• "Right in the Middle of it All" History of the region
• History of Western Airlines and the planes it operated - archive.org copy of now-defunct page