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Home  /  Major  /  Western  /  Archival Pay     /  Tree  /  Files

Home  /  Major  /  Western  /  Archival Pay     /  Tree  /  Files

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Western Airlines (IATA: WA, ICAO: WAL, Call sign: Western) was a large airline based in California, with operations throughout the Western United States and Western Canada, as well as into Mexico. The airline also served such international destinations as London, England and Nassau, Bahamas during its existence. Western had hubs at Los Angeles International Airport, Salt Lake City International Airport, and the former Stapleton International Airport in Denver. Before it merged with Delta Air Lines it was headquartered at Los Angeles International Airport. The company's slogan for many years was "Western Airlines....The Only Way To Fly!"

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. On 17 April 1926, Western's first flight took place with a Douglas M-2 airplane.[2] 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.

Transcontinental & Western Airlines
The company reincorporated in 1928 as Western Air Express Corp. Then, in 1930, purchased Standard Air Lines, 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. In a 1934 press release by the company, it called itself the Western Air Division of General Air Lines.

Western Airlines
In 1941 Western Air Express changed its name to Western Air Lines (WAL) and later to Western Airlines. The carrier also billed itself as Western Airlines International at one point. After World War II, Western was awarded a route from Los Angeles to Denver via Las Vegas, but financial problems forced Western to sell the route as well as Douglas DC-6 new aircraft delivery positions to United Air Lines in 1947. Western was later awarded a route between Minneapolis and Salt Lake City via Casper, Wyoming, thus allowing the airline to develop from a large regional airline into a major mainline air carrier. This growth also enabled the airline to introduce Douglas DC-6 (DC-6B models), Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprops and eventually Boeing 707 service. The airline's president was Terrell "Terry" Drinkwater. Drinkwater got into a dispute with the administration in Washington D.C. which severely hampered WAL's growth. Pressured in a famous phone call by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to "buy American made aircraft", Drinkwater reportedly responded: "Mr. President, you run your country and let me run my airline!" For years after this exchange, the federal Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) would not award Western new routes while their major competitors including United and American grew enormous even though all of Western's airliners were of U.S. manufacture while their competitor's fleets included aircraft that had been built in Europe by British or French companies.

In August 1953 Western was serving 38 airports. By June 1968, that number had only grown to 42 airports.

Western entered the jet age in 1960 when it introduced Boeing 707 jetliners (B707-139 models) with flights between Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, OR and Seattle. In 1967 WAL acquired Pacific Northern Airlines which served the state of Alaska from Anchorage and Seattle. In the late 1960s Western aimed for an all-jet fleet, adding Boeing 707-320Bs, 727-200s and 737-200s to their fleet of 720Bs. The two leased B707-139s had previously been removed from the fleet in favor of the turbofan powered Boeing 720B. Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprops were then replaced with new Boeing 737-200s. In 1973 Western added nine McDonnell Douglas DC-10s, marketing their wide-body cabins as "DC-10 Spaceships".

Western Airlines Boeing 727.
Western was headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The airline's principal hubs were located at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Salt Lake City (SLC) and Minneapolis/St Paul (MSP). Prior to airline deregulation, Western operated smaller hubs in Las Vegas, Nevada (LAS) and Denver (DEN).[4] By the spring of 1987 shortly before Western was acquired by Delta Air Lines, the airline operated only two hubs with a major operation in Salt Lake City and a secondary hub in Los Angeles.

At their peak in the 1970s and 1980s Western flew to many cities across the western United States, and to Mexico (Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo and Mazatlán), Alaska (Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Kodiak), Hawaii (Honolulu, Kahului, Kona, and Hilo), and Canada (Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton). New York City, Washington, D.C. and Boston were added, Chicago and St. Louis in the midwest, and Texas (Austin, Dallas/Ft. Worth, El Paso, Houston and San Antonio). Western also had many flights within California, competing with Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA), Air California (AirCal) and Hughes Airwest. In addition, Western operated nonstop "Islander" jet service to Hawaii from a number of mainland U.S. cities in its route system that previously did not have direct flights to the 50th state. The airline also flew nonstop jet service between Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and Honolulu as well.

One of the airline's smallest destinations was West Yellowstone, Montana, located near Yellowstone National Park. Western operated seasonal service into West Yellowstone during the summer months with Boeing 737-200 jetliners which had replaced Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop service. During the 1970s and 1980s, Western served a number of small cities in the western U.S. with Boeing 737-200 jet service including Butte, MT, Casper, WY, Cheyenne, WY, Helena, MT, Idaho Falls, ID, Pierre, SD, Pocatello, ID, Rapid City, SD and Sheridan, WY.

In the late 1970s Western Airlines (WAL) and Continental Airlines (CAL) agreed to merge. A dispute broke out over what to call the combined airline: Western-Continental or Continental-Western. An infamous coin toss occurred. Bob Six, the colorful founder of CAL, demanded that Continental be "tails" in deference to their marketing slogan "We Really Move Our Tail for You! Continental Airlines: the Proud Bird with the Golden Tail". The coin flip turned up "heads". Six was so disappointed he called the merger off.

In 1981 Western Airlines began international flights from Anchorage and Denver to London Gatwick Airport with a single DC-10-30. At one point as an extension of the service to the U.K., Western operated one stop, no change of plane DC-10-30 flights between Honolulu and London via a stop in Anchorage. Another international route at this time was one stop, no change of plane service between Los Angeles and Nassau, Bahamas which was flown with a DC-10 via a stop in Miami. As they extended their network to destinations on the east coast such as New York City, Washington, D.C. and Boston, as well as to Chicago and St. Louis in the midwest and New Orleans in the south, Western Airlines became a prominent sponsor of the Bob Barker television show The Price is Right, to make customers in the East more aware of their new presence.

Delta Air Lines merger
In the early 1980s, Air Florida tried to buy Western Airlines, but they were able to purchase only 16 percent of the airline's stock. Finally, on September 9, 1986 Western Airlines and Delta Air Lines, entered into an agreement and plan of merger. The merger agreement was approved by the United States Department of Transportation on December 11, 1986. On December 16, 1986, shareholder approval of the merger was conferred and Western Airlines became a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta. The Western brand was discontinued and the employee workforces were fully merged on April 1, 1987. All of Western's aircraft were repainted in Delta's livery including ten McDonnell Douglas DC-10 wide body trijets, which Delta decided to eliminate from the combined fleet as they already operated a considerable number of Lockheed L-1011 TriStar wide body jetliners at the time which were a similar type when compared with the DC-10. Western's former Salt Lake City hub has become a major Delta hub, and Delta currently uses Los Angeles International Airport as a major gateway.