The Birth of Trans-Canada Air Lines

Prime Minister William Mackenzie King committed Canada to a new airline

Compared to the United States and Europe, commercial aviation got off to a very slow start in Canada. Despite its vast distances with limited road infrastructure prior to the Second World War that intuitively would have made for a favorable environment for the development of airlines, the really only serious effort was James Richardson's Canadian Airways established in 1927 in Winnipeg. But his airline was constantly in the red and depended heavily on air mail revenues to stay afloat. But Canadian Airways didn't have an extensive reach and wasn't all too different from the numerous bush pilot operations whose fortunes were tied to whatever industry they happened to be supporting- mining and trapping being the most common. There were two reasons for the lack of commercial aviation development in Canada in the interwar period- the first one was quite obviously the weather. Flying in those days was very much a risky endeavor in the harsh Canadian winters and secondly, Canada lacked an extensive aviation infrastructure. Lacking a network of airports, radio navigation aids and fleet of modern aircraft robust enough to deal with winter, nearly all the Canadian air mail had to go south and into the US transcontinental air network and then re-enter Canada at select points nearest their destination. For example, air mail out of and into the capital in Ottawa passed through New York City on Colonial Airways (which merged into Eastern Airlines in 1956) and air mail into and out of Vancouver passed via Seattle on United Air Lines flights. There were, however, two large competing railroads in Canada, Canadian Pacific (CPR) and Canadian National (CNR). The intense rivalry between CPR and CNR left little capital to the development of commercial aviation and this would leave Canada firmly in the age of rail, lagging behind the United States and Europe in commercial aviation development. During the Great Depression, Canadian Prime Minister R.B. Bennett created an unemployment relief project called the Trans Canada Airway that put thousands to work building an aviation infrastructure to allow coast-to-coast flights across the breadth of Canada. Work began in 1929 on airfields, radio navigation aids and weather reporting stations across the nation. However, Prime Minister Bennett's motivation wasn't for the development of commercial aviation but rather to use the Trans Canada Airway as a means of allowing the Royal Canadian Air Force to rapidly move its squadrons around the country and reinforce either coast in times of war. Succeeding Bennett as Prime Minister in October 1935, it was William Lyon Mackenzie King just a month after his election committed the government to starting a transcontinental airline to operate on the Trans Canada Airway. King wanted to be part of an Anglo-Canadian effort to create an around the world airline route before Pan American did so. 

C.D. Howe, the prime mover behind the formation of Trans-Canada Air Lines

King's first step was appointing Clarence Decatur Howe as the first "czar" to oversee all the railways, marine routes and canals and the beginning of air transport. Howe had the portfolios of two ministries as the Minister of Railways and Canals and the Minister of Marine. With intense efficiency, he put the Canadian National Railway on a sound financial footing and made it a crown corporation (government owned). As the only engineer in King's cabinet, he possessed technical know-how from his prior business careers that essentially transformed Canada from a primarily agriculture-based economy to an industrial economy. Howe was also an aviation enthusiasts and the only one in the Cabinet who had flown on an aircraft. He felt that aviation was destined to replace the railway as the main means of transport and communication across Canada. With the passage of the Department of Transport Act in 1936, Howe reformed Canada's transportation system under a new federal Department of Transport. He was keen to avoid what he thought was the wasteful rivalry between Canadian Pacific and the Canadian National Railways when it come to commercial aviation (which ironically Canada did end up with two airline rivals for years, CP Air and Air Canada). Now Canadian Pacific (CPR) had lost much of its political clout that hit had gained under successive Conservative governments. With Prime Minister King hailing from the Liberal Party, he did what he could to fight what he felt was CPR's stranglehold on transport in Canada. That left the Canadian National Railway (CNR) as the preferred vehicle for Howe's goals since he had already made it a crown corporation. It would have been logical for Howe and King to buy up all the small bush operators and amalgamate them into a new national airline, but the government had already done this 1918-1923 to form CNR and it proved to be a costly exercise that no one wanted to repeat with an airline. It also would have been easier to buy James Richardson out to get Canadian Airways, but King felt Richardson was too close to the previous administration and didn't trust him. And it was an open secret that Richardson's financial stewardship of Canadian Airways was rocky at best. Interestingly, Richardson thought he would be the instrument of Canadian commercial aviation and upon learning Howe favored Lockheed designs, set about ordering two Lockheed 10 Electras. 

Sir Edward Beatty, head of Canadian Pacific Railway

Because it was anticipated that starting a national airline would be costly, Howe proposed that both CNR and CPR buy equal shares in the new proposed airline. The airline would have a board of directors that were divided among the Department of Transport, CPR and CNR. Sir Edward Beatty, head of CPR, objected to this arrangement as he argued that the Department of Transport and CNR's directors were sharing the same interests which would leave CPR's portion of the directorship in a constant minority. While negotiations with Beatty continued, Howe announced on 26 November 1936 that a new airline would be granted a monopoly to operate on the Trans Canada Airway as a subsidiary of CNR. It wasn't important if the new airline made a profit- Howe saw the new airline as a public necessity much like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) he created that same year. If the new airline was making a profit, it was obviously charging its passengers too much! The airline would have guaranteed all year round service linking all of the major Canadian cities coast to coast. Howe had American airline personnel brought in to help get the new airline up and running. He had flown on US airlines and wanted to be sure that his new airline would be immediately on par in terms of safety, operations, and image as the ranking airlines in the United States. In February 1937 a bill was proposed in the House of Commons which established the proposed Trans-Canada Airlines as a CNR subsidiary. Hoping Sir Beatty and CPR would participate, 49% of the shares of the airline would made available for private investment. But even if CPR bought all 49% of the shares, it would still be in a minority position and he formally withdrew from the venture, leaving Prime Minister King to authorize Trans-Canada Airlines as a crown corporation with 51% of the airline owned by Canadian National Railway and 49% owned by the Department of Transport. The birth of Trans-Canada Air Lines came to be at 9:00pm on 10 April 1937 when the bill received its Royal Assent. 

CF-AZY takes off on Trans-Canada Air Lines' first revenue flight

By 30 July 1937, nearly all the radio beacons were operational along the airway and to publicize the completion of the airway, Howe arranged for his department's Lockheed 12A CF-CCT to fly across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver. To provide Trans-Canada Air Lines with start up capital, CNR borrowed $5 million from the Canadian Treasury. Since it was anticipated that 75% of Trans-Canada's revenues would come from air mail, the postmaster general would hold one of the seats on the airline's board of directors. The first president of the airline was S.J. Hungerford who was also the president of CNR. He would hold that position at the airline until 1941. For many years CNR was closely bound to the airline as a result of the arrangements of its formation. In fact, until 1974, the office of the secretary at Air Canada was the same person who held the office of secretary at CNR. Many of the new airline's first pilots came from various bush operators and many key personnel were recruited from Canadian Airways. In fact, the two Lockheed Electra 10As that James Richardson had purchased in anticipation of his airline being the "chosen instrument" were purchased by Trans-Canada Air Lines for radio calibration and training flights along the airway. One of these Electras, CF-AZY, was the aircraft to fly Trans-Canada Air Lines's inaugural air services on 1 September 1937 from Vancouver to Boeing Field in Seattle. The flight departed Vancouver at 5:00pm and arrived at Boeing Field at 5:50pm. Full daily services began on 17 October 1937 with the round trip fare between the two cities set at $14.20 (approximately $233 in today's dollars). Not only was it Trans-Canada's inaugural route, it was also its first international route and also its first route with competition with United offering Boeing 247 service between the two cities. Three more Lockheed 10As were purchased to join the two ex-Canadian Airways examples and these five Electras were known as the "Five Sisters". Trans-Canada was the first airline in North America to equip its aircraft with cargo hold smoke detectors and had oxygen masks in the cockpit as standard long before they were a mandated requirement. On 1 April 1939 the first transcontinental flights left simultaneously from Vancouver and Montreal headed for the other city. Keep in mind that Trans-Canada Air Lines was flew its first services in 1937, the same year the Trans Canada Airway was finished. And it was only 43 years earlier that Canada completed its transcontinental railroad! 

Source: Air Canada: The History by Peter Pigott. Dundurn Press, 2014, pp 12-35. Photos: Wikipedia, Toronto Star, Air Canada, Time Magazine.

Flying High This Past Week 16 March-22 March

First a bit of housekeeping. This week I switched this blog over to have its own domain name at www.tailsthroughtime.com. The previous address of aviationtrivia.blogspot.com still works and you'll get a redirect notice if you use the old link that will take you to the new URL. Now, without further ado, here's what's been getting a lot of page views this past week here at TAILS THROUGH TIME:

• Two's Company and Three's a Crowd: The Boeing 737-200 Flight Crew Controversy: Quite naturally the latest post to the blog would be the most popular in the past week! The question of whether the 737-200 required two flight crew or three created quite a bit of acrimony in the late 1960s when the aircraft was introduced. Nowhere else was the dispute more pronounced than at United Air Lines, one of Boeing's key customers for the new jet.
• The Crazy Cats: The Lockheed Neptunes of the US Army: Yes, you read that right. The *Army*. In Vietnam, the Army found that it needed a bigger and longer ranged aircraft for the SIGINT/COMINT role that today's Guardrail aircraft perform. Intraservice rivalries being what they were then, the Navy stepped up to help the Army and offered some P-2 Neptunes from stateside Reserve squadrons for modification so the Army wouldn't have to deal with what was then a very prickly USAF. The AP-2Es (a spurious designation to avoid antagonizing the USAF) were the heaviest and most complex Neptune variant to take to the skies. Many of the SIGINT/COMINT equipment used on the Army Neptunes would influence the development of the Guardrail system used today by the Army. 
• The N-20 Program: Switzerland's First Indigenous Jet Aircraft: The Federal Aircraft Factory (FAF) N-20 Aiguillon was an attractive flying wing fighter design that only got as far as taxi tests and some very short hops short of a true first flight before being canceled. The Aiguillon had two flying forebears, though, that contributed to the flight test program and development of this aborted fighter design.
• Tupolev's Own Tristar Design: It's not unusual for the Russian design bureaus (called OKBs) to reuse designations. The Tu-204 that flies today is actually the third use of that designation. The first use was for an enlarged T-tailed jet development of the Tu-134/Tu-154 and the second use of the designation was for a widebody trijet that looked very much like the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar. 
• The Rocket-Boosted P-51 Mustang: In 1945 the USAAF's Mustangs were besting the Messerschmitt Me 262 jets over their German bases where the jets were most vulnerable. As a result of augmented airfield defenses, work turned to a rocket-boosted P-51 that would have the speed to catch the Me 262 at altitude and not have to run the gauntlet of airfield defenses.
• The Legend of Half-Moon Bay: In this day and age when most of us are jaded to air travel and complaints about airlines are the norm, from the 1962 Christmas season is a unparalleled story of ingenuity and a can-do spirit by airline employees to go the extra mile. I won't spoil it here, but let's just say we'd all be hard pressed to come up with anything that equals what a small California airline pulled off that year, creating the "Legend of Half Moon Bay"!

The next TAILS THROUGH TIME article goes up tomorrow night, 23 March. Stay tuned! 

The Industry Cooperation in the Lockheed Electra Investigation.

The outboard nacelle- the Achilles heel of the Lockheed Electra

In my previous blog entry, I had discussed how subcontracting was a way of building goodwill between aerospace competitors, the example from I talked about was in reference to the Space Shuttle program. However, even aside from financial incentives, there have been times in aviation history that corporate rivals have cooperated beyond that of a joint venture and one unheralded example of such cooperation was the extensive investigation into the loss of two Lockheed L-188 Electras shortly after the type went into service. The first loss was on 29 September 1959 when Braniff International Airways Flight 542 went down near Buffalo, Texas, on a flight from Houston Hobby Airport to Dallas Love Field. The second loss was on 17 March 1960 when Northwest Airlines Flight 710 went down near Tell City, Indiana, on a flight from Chicago Midway to Miami. 

The cooperation of Lockheed's competitors began after the Braniff crash. A Dallas warehouse was used to reassemble the wreckage as part of the investigation. Using a chicken wire frame, pieces were added in a gigantic jigsaw puzzle from October into November. In January 1960, the investigators with the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) were no closer to determining the cause of the loss of Braniff 542 and invited representatives from Eastern Airlines and American Airlines, both operators of large Electra fleets, along with NASA to join the investigation. The following month Lockheed invited engineers from Boeing, Convair, and Douglas to review what had been done so far in the investigation. But the loss of the second Electra when Northwest 710 went down shook the airline and aviation industry as aircraft like the Electra were the leading edge of the jet turbine age that would revolutionize air travel. There was near unanimous sentiment in American aviation that the cause of the loss of two Electras in passenger service had to be found and rectified for the good of the entire industry. 

NASA immediately put its resources at Lockheed's disposal (the decision to ground versus speed restrict the Electra will be subject of a future post for this blog). Allison, the maker of the Electra's engines, initiated its own flight test program with its own company Electra. Boeing and Douglas made their resources also available to Lockheed- with both companies fielding their own advanced jetliner designs for the day, helping Lockheed determine the cause of the Electra crashes was vital to confidence in both the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8. With Lockheed engineering staff getting pulled from various projects to the Electra investigation, Boeing's chief Bill Allen dispatched his own engineers and his best aerodynamicists from Seattle to assist Lockheed in Burbank. The investigation and any fix needed had a name- Lockheed Electra Achievement Program, or LEAP. To everyone involved, it became Operation LEAP. 

Part of Operation LEAP was the use of a specially instrumented Electra that was flown by Lockheed and government test pilots over the Sierra Nevada range looking for mountain wave turbulence that would shake the test aircraft as no airliner had ever before been punished in-flight. Lockheed had actually pioneering the methods for testing inflight loads on structures back in 1949 that became the industry standard in flight testing. Sixty nine flights into the rough air offered a clue- the load instruments noted that the outboard nacelles were taking a rougher beating than expected. Flutter of some sort became the suspect cause- every aircraft has some degree of flutter, the air moving over various parts and imposing loads can cause them to vibrate and if unchecked, those vibrations increase in amplitude until structures fail. Aircraft structures are designed in part to dampen these oscillations. 

With flutter as the suspect, Douglas had sent over to Lockheed a vane exciter that was basically an actuated vane mounted on the wingtip that could move quickly to induce flutter in the wings. Even in smooth air, the vane exciters could really dole out some punishment to the wing structure. Douglas had used the device in the DC-8 flight test program and put them at Lockheed's disposal. The devices in combination with the rough air flight testing showed the outboard engine nacelles were the source of the flutter and a review of the wreckage from the Braniff and Northwest crashes showed that the outboard nacelle structure in combination with the wing structure allowed an obscure type of flutter called "whirl mode"- in short, gyroscopic movements of the propeller caused oscillations in the nacelle which were then transferred to the wing which caused the wing to fail. 

Though commercial rivals, Boeing and Douglas were only keenly aware that Lockheed was well respected in the business and its engineering and design methods were top notch. Much of how Lockheed went about the design and testing of the Electra wasn't all that dissimilar to how Boeing and Douglas went about the design and testing of their jetliners. If there was something Lockheed had missed, then it was something that left their designs  and the processes used open to question as well. 

On 12 May 1960, Lockheed chairman Robert Gross announced the cause of the loss of Braniff 542 and Northwest 710 as unstable whirl mode. Think about the technology of that day as this was well before computer modeling was available. Now think about the time frame- Braniff 542 went down at the end of September 1959. Northwest 710 went down in the middle of March 1960. And by the middle of May 1960 the cause had been identified. It's one of the great herculean efforts of American aviation that an obscure flutter mode was found to be the cause in just seven months. That amazing time frame wouldn't have been possible if Lockheed didn't have the cooperation of its commercial rivals as well as NASA, Allison, and the airline operators of the Electra. 

Source: The Electra Story: Aviation's Greatest Mystery (Bantam Air & Space Series No. 9) by Robert Serling. Bantam Publishing, 1962, 1991. Illustration: Flight Simulator X screenshot.

The Rise and Fall of Air Florida under Ed Acker

Aviation history is often a study in technology as well as events but sometimes the really fascinating parts concern the personalities and how personal traits shaped major decisions that impacted the course of history. One of the those personalities was C. Edward Acker, one of the airline industry's CEOs during the chaotic deregulation period in the United States in the 1980s. If there was one quote that summed up the titanic personality of this Texan, it was something he himself once said: "Once you get hooked on the airline business, it's worse than dope."

But to really understand what Ed Acker did to airlines, you have to go back before deregulation to the state of Florida. After twenty-some years of running various businesses ranging from a candy company to a roofing business, Miami businessman Eli Timoner decided in 1972 to start an airline called Air Florida with some second-hand Lockheed Electras. But Timoner himself admitted that his only airline experience was that of "being a frequent flier". But he had seen the rise of Pacific Southwest Airlines as an intrastate carrier in California and probably was aware of the beginnings of Southwest Airlines in Texas. By being in intrastate carrier, he wouldn't have to deal with the Civil Aeronautics Board which in the days before deregulation controlled all aspects of the industry from routes to fares and even to some degree, aircraft acquisition. Timoner felt that the time was right for Florida to have its own intrastate carrier.

But as a Miami newspaper reporter once put it, Timoner was "long on ambition and short on experience". In its first seven years of operation Air Florida scratched out a small niche for itself in the Florida market, but it was hard going and in 1977 the small airline lost $2 million and Timoner pondered whether it was worth continuing.

Back in 1975, a federal investigation was underway at Braniff International that accused officials of the Dallas-based airline of illegally distributing over $1 million in airline tickets to travel agents throughout Latin America, Braniff's traditional international stronghold. Some of the proceeds made their way into Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign and with Watergate still bringing federal scrutiny in every back room and corner of the corridors of power, Ed Acker, the Braniff president and Harding Lawrence, the Braniff chairman, were the two highest ranking Braniff officials named in the settlement with the CAB that resulted in a $300,000 fine against the airline. Acker stepped down but he wasn't going to stay out of the business for long. That was when he found out Eli Timoner and Air Florida needed help.

Using his Dallas business contacts to bring new capital investment into Air Florida, Acker became Air Florida's new president by purchasing controlling interest in the airline for only $1.5 million in July 1977 with Eli Timoner becoming its chairman. At the time Acker came to Air Florida, the shoestring operation flew only three Lockheed Electras. Acker immediately began to pick up jet aircraft second hand all over North America to replace the Electras, first with DC-9 Series 10s, then Boeing 737-100s and 737-200s. Acker had the airline's colors revamped from orange and blue to blue and green. Inflight service was overhauled and ever the marketing wonk, Acker introduced orange juice with champagne called "Sunshine Sparklers" on Air Florida flights. Certain passengers could fly for free on new routes by getting a "Sunshine Kiss" by kissing a designated "Kiss Miss"- an attractive airline employee at the gate. Southwest's style of pricing discounts was introduced with deep price cuts for flying during off-peak hours. Within the first year, passenger numbers doubled. And they kept on growing.

And then came deregulation. Air Florida was no longer constrained to just serving the state of Florida. Acker carried an OAG in his pocket that was dog-eared and well-worn and he'd thumb through it thinking of new cities to connect. Any city that got a service cut back inevitably got Air Florida service. When Pan Am acquired National, Pan Am got National's route authority between Miami and London and Acker got DC-10s to compete with Pan Am to London. First class seats were covered in sheepskin and free limo service in a Rolls-Royce was available in London. No promotion, no level of service escaped Acker's attention.

Soon the press was lauding praise on C. Edward Acker as one of the darlings of deregulation and he got what in retrospect was an ill-conceived reputation as a "turnaround king" for what he was doing with Air Florida. In 1981, two years after the acquisition of National Airlines, Pan Am was still bungling the merger and had to drastically cut back its services between New York and Florida that had been one of National's traditional trademark services. Practically overnight Acker threw half of Air Florida's fleet into that market and snapped up even Boeing 727s to augment the rapid expansion. Only Eastern at the time had a larger market share than Air Florida in 1981.

And all of it was ballooning Air Florida's debt.

Not one mention in Wall Street or amongst industry analysts was made that Air Florida's debt was growing at a time when interest rates were high and the company's bottom line was actually being subsidized by Acker's financial dealings on the foreign currency market as well as the stock market. No, the meteoric rise of Air Florida won it and Acker praise in the financial press- Acker's a genius! Acker and Air Florida are corporate success stories!

In August of 1981, Acker was in New York City to speak to a group of industry analysts for several Wall Street brokerage firms. Expecting an in-depth analysis of Air Florida's operation and finances, Acker rose to the podium and told all of them that he wasn't able to discuss the financial affairs of Air Florida with them. "I talked to Cunard Lines and told them I was interested in a job as captain of the Titanic. They informed me that I was too late. Not having that challenge available, I decided to try to find one comparable to that. And so I am accepting the chairmanship of a company called Pan American World Airways."

With that, he turned over the podium to Eli Timoner and left. On 1 September 1981 he took over from William T. Sewell at Pan Am. One of Acker's first acts as head of Pan Am was to re-institute all of the flight cutbacks Sewell had made on the New York-Florida market- the very same market he threw Air Florida into with gusto. Eli Timoner now found the airline he started saddled with a massive debt and facing a reinvigorated Pan Am juggernaut determined to drive Air Florida out of business.

And then, one snowy January afternoon in 1982, a tower controller at Washington National cleared an Air Florida flight: "Palm 90, taxi into position and hold. Be ready for an immediate. No delay on departure, if you will."

Within days of the Air Florida crash in the icy Potomac River, approximately 100,000 reservations on Air Florida were canceled. Weeks later, Eli Timoner suffered a stroke and Donald Lloyd Jones from American Airlines was brought in. Jones was edged out at American by Robert Crandall to run American. But it was too late for Jones to save the airline. Acker's foreign currency trading was no longer boosting Air Florida's bottom line. Acker's marketing engine was sucking passengers from Air Florida to Pan Am in droves. Within several weeks $14 million in profit evaporated and creditors moved into seize the airline's assets. The airline even got slapped with an IRS tax lien. That year, Air Florida suffered a $78 million loss. Two years of massive downsizing stripped Air Florida to the bone.

On 3 July 1984, an airline that went in five years from an intrastate carrier with three airplanes to one that spanned the eastern United States, Europe, and the Caribbean declared bankruptcy and abruptly grounded all of its aircraft and sent all of its employees home. Thousands of passengers were stranded on the Independence Day holiday weekend. After weeks of deliberations in bankruptcy court, Air Florida failed to come up with a restructuring plan as it lacked flexibility as most of its assets were already encumbered with debt and all it had left that were worth anything were its routes to Europe and its slots at New York La Guardia and Washington National. The airline reached out Midway Airlines for a rescue plan that involved financing with the eventual acquisition of the airline by Midway, but the deadlines set by the bankruptcy court could not be met and Air Florida faded into the history books of aviation enthusiasts.

And Ed Acker? What happened at Pan Am will be story for another day!

Source: Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines into Chaos by Thomas Petzinger, Jr. Three Rivers Press, 1996, p201-208.

The Legend of Half Moon Bay

It's a travel nightmare. Weather delays and closures at airports during peak travel seasons. It was no different in the past than it is now with air travel when we're at the mercy of the weather despite the advances in technology since the end of the Second World War ushered in unprecedented growth in air travel. Picture in your mind it's the start of the 1962 Christmas holiday travel season and one of the primary airports on the US West Coast, San Francisco, is socked in with fog so thick that anything more than ball toss away fades into the murk. Fog at San Francisco International is nothing new, but this particular week in 1962 the fog stubbornly persisted throughout the holiday season. Flights were delayed or canceled and passengers were stranded at San Francisco International Airport. Unless, of course, you're booked on Pacific Southwest Airlines, PSA.

Several hours before San Francisco International became fog-bound, the PSA station manager called every airport in the Bay Area that could handle PSA's Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprops. Half Moon Bay Airport has long enough runways and sitting on the other side of the coastal ridge from the Bay Area, has clear weather. And fortuitously for PSA, Half Moon Bay's runways aren't thick enough to handle the big jets operated by the other airlines at San Francisco International. PSA employees were dispatched to Half Moon Bay to direct ground and station operations while a fleet of 32 buses are chartered to run a continuous shuttle between Half Moon Bay and San Francisco International.

As the tarmac at Half Moon Bay wasn't strong enough for the Electra, PSA's pilots turned just barely off the runway with only two engines on one side running while passengers disembarked to waiting buses to take them to San Francisco. Meanwhile new busloads of passengers from San Francisco queued up away from the disembarking passengers to begin boarding. Since Half Moon Bay didn't have a control tower, another PSA pilot with a radio was stationed on the roof of what became a makeshift terminal building using the company radio frequency to keep arriving and departing Electras apart.

San Mateo Country sheriff's deputies were called in to keep the curious clear of the flight operations and to direct the traffic as many ticketed PSA passengers began to show up at Half Moon Bay Airport itself. PSA ran radio commercials throughout the Bay Area that said "PSA will get you home for Christmas" as the Electra flights shuttled back and forth to the clear skies of Southern California. Some PSA employees would work 36 hour shifts and a small hotel was used for flight crews that timed out on their duty hours.

The unique Half Moon Bay Airport operation ran from 14 December 1962 all the way through Christmas, carrying over 40,000 passengers on 488 flights to Burbank, Los Angeles and San Diego. It was then that the aviation "Legend of Half Moon Bay" was born as PSA was inundated for weeks after the holidays with letters of thanks from passengers.

It's one of my favorite airline history stories and I count myself lucky to have been able to fly PSA before they were absorbed with great sorrow into USAir.

Source: Poor Sailors' Airline: The Story of Kenny Friedkin's Pacific Southwest Airlines by Gary Kissel. Palawdr Press, 2002, p97-100.