TWA - An Airline and It's Aircraft

Book excerpt: This is a book about one of the greatest names in airline & air transport history. Trans World Airlines (or Transcontinental & Western Air when it was first formed) has contributed more to the technological advance of commercial aviation than any other airline, except possibly Pan American Airways, which launched two jet ages. But during the formative years, when aviation was yet young, T.W.A. was always in the vanguard of progress. One of its ancestors, Western Air Express, started the first sustained passenger service of all the airlines created by the legislation of 1925 & 1926. The other ancestor, Transcontinental Air Transport (T.A.T.) pioneered transcontinental passenger transport with the aid of a famous airplane, the Ford Tri-Motor. It was selected by the airline's technical advisor, none other than Charles Lindbergh--who also planned the route & flew the inaugural flight from Los Angeles, while Amelia Earhart christened the first Ford out of New York. Again with Lindbergh's blessing, T.W.A. sponsored the prototype of the famous Douglas twin-engined DC series, with which, for the first time, a United States manufacturer was able to start an export trade with modern airliners. T.W.A.'s Tommy Tomlinson did the high-altitude research that led, with the Boeing 307, to the introduction of pressurized comfort--flying "above the weather." Owner Howard Hughes played a large part in setting the specification for the elegant Constellation airliners, which a British commentator described as "America's Secret Weapon" in the development of the post-war generations. Such was the excellence of the Kansas City Engineering Base that, at the beginning of the Jet Age, against fierce competition, a single Bowing 707 operated for a whole month, without incident, or even delay. In more recent years (as might be expected of "The Airline of the Stars") T.W.A. was the first to show on board full-length movies. At the other end of the amenities spectrum, it conducted an impressive trans-Atlantic cattle airlift. It has survived near-bankruptcy, mainly because of the intense loyalty of its staff. It was the first U.S. airline to introduce twin-engined ETOPS trans-Atlantic operations. It just started nonstop transcontinental service into Washington's National Airport, the first effective inter-city time-saving since 1958. The list of achievements for this great airline is a long one; & Paladwr Press has tried to record & narrate most of them in the pages of this book. It is illustrated with almost 200 photographs, 30 maps & 48 precision drawings by Mike Machat, & it lists every one of the more than 1,200 individual aircraft that has proudly worn red & white colours of T.W.A.