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Catch the Smile of Pacific Southwest Airlines

© John L. Hoh, Jr.

In my documentation of the history of US Airways, I ran across a component airline known as Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA). This airline had some pizzazz and a story too good to keep tucked away. Even today loyal PSA workers keep web sites of the fun times they had at the airline sometimes called "Poor Sailor's Airline" (using the PSA initials and playing off the home base of the airline, San Diego, which also features Marine and Naval bases).

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This airline also featured smiles painted on the noses of its aircraft! Why this came to be has its legends, but PSA certainly used it to affect with its "Catch Our Smile" ad campaign. PSA flight attendants, being legendary California girls, were decked out in hot pants and miniskirts to match the fun-loving style of the airline.

After World War II many Army Air Force flyers came home looking for work and eligible for GI bill grants for education. One way to solve this problem was to take commercial flying lessons. PSA was thus able to recruit and train pilots for its fledgling company. The advances in aviation during the war made it possible for new airlines to start up with aircraft much more modern and advanced than before World War II.

Kenny Friedkin loved flying. Friedkin ran a flight school for the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots during World War II. In 1946 he teamed with his buddy Joe Plosser to buy a war-surplus Fairchild PT19 to do instrument training. The Plosser-Friedkin school at San Diego's Lindbergh Field began with a staff of three: instructor Joe Plosser, Jr., ground school instructor Betty Lambert, and Eleanor "Fergie" Fulmer, instructor on the Link trainer-the forerunner of the flight simulator. Business was good as long as veterans used the G.I. bill to get their commercial pilot's ratings. Soon additional hanger space was rented and more flight instructors were hired: J. Floyd "Andy" Andrews, Leo Leonard, Gordon Tinker, and Hugh Wood, all of whom were to play pivotal roles in the development of PSA. The school earned a national reputation and more that two hundred students would be enrolled in courses at any one time.

In 1947 Friedkin persuaded Victor Lundy, a San Diego mortgage broker, to buy out Plosser's share. The school was renamed the Friedkin School of Aeronautics. But business soon slowed to a trickle and Friedkin pursued other aeronautical ventures, including a cargo service. A staple of this cargo service was flying mud suckers in from Mexico! It seems, however, that while mud suckers were prized as fish bait, they didn't generate enough revenue.

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