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Eastern Airlines: An Ace and an Astronaut

© John L. Hoh, Jr.

Students of history often find colorful characters and interesting stories in their research. This forum has explored such in the Chalk's Ocean Airways and the Pacific Southwest Airlines. It is probably what keeps us going in researching history, wondering what oddball fact we'll uncover next.

This article will look at another airline that had a somewhat colorful history, even though it no longer exists. Leading this airline have been a World War I flying ace and an Apollo astronaut.

A remnant of this airline's legacy lives on in my home. Some time after the airline ceased all operations, a local thrift store was selling silverware-four pieces for $1! The pieces were smaller than one normally finds for silverware, and picking up a piece I immediately recognized the stylized "bird" that was the latest Eastern logo! I purchased four sets for a grand total of $3.

Eastern Airlines began its history as Pitcairn Airways in 1929 in Byrn Athyn, Pennsylvania. In 1927 Harold F. Pitcairn received government contracts to carry airmail along an eastern route that connected New York to Florida via Atlanta. One constant we find in the airline business is that many early carriers got their start in airmail contracts. And in the case of Pitcairn, the company also made airplanes (similar to Boeing's creation of what would become United Airlines). This was preferable to using war surplus machines from World War I (such as KLM had done at start-up).

Soon in 1929 Clement Keys, who owned North American Aviation, purchased Pitcairn Airways. Clement Keys was a former financial editor of The Wall Street Journal and an untiring promoter of multimillion-dollar aviation corporations. In 1930 he changed the name to Eastern Air Transport. In 1931 passenger service was added to augment the mail service. The fledgling company served a route that connected sixteen eastern seaboard cities.

Eastern would change ownership several times in the turbulent, Depression-era 1930s. The name was also changed to Eastern Airlines. In April 1938, North American Aviation finally sold Eastern because of criticism that it was unfair for a single company to both produce and operate aircraft as North American did. World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker, the manager of the airline, led a group that purchased the airline. Rickenbacker led Eastern in a period of growth. He was responsible for setting up Eastern's Great Silver Fleet, the famous fleet of DC-2 aircraft that operated on the East Coast. One of these planes was the first commercial airplane to touch down at Washington, D.C.'s new National Airport (today Ronald Reagan National Airport) in June 1941. Eastern was the world's first airline to begin mail service using autogyros on 6 July 1939

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