Florida Airlines
by
Florida
Airline was born in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, so it would be appropriate
to look at the contributions to aviation and in particular airlines that occurred
in the Tampa Bay area. A little known event occurred on February 19, 1911. Daredevil pilots thrilled crowds at the
South Florida State Fair. Here, Lincoln
Beachey and Jack Douglas Mc Curdy thrilled the crowd. The next month while thrilling the crowd in the Tampa Bay area
again, aviation history credited Beachey with making the first night
flight. A few days later, although not
in Tampa Bay across the state at Palm Beach, Mc Curdy spoke the first wireless
message from the air to the ground.
On January 1, 1914, Tony
Janus made history when he inaugurated the world’s first commercial
airline. The birth of what was to
become Florida Airlines. He flew his
Benoit air boat between St. Petersburg and Tampa, a flight of twenty-three
minutes.
Later in 1929 a great rhubarb
was going on in Tampa. It seems they
wanted to dredge up an airport and a seaplane base from the bay. The New York, Rio and Buenos Aires Airline
(NYRBA), the predecessor of the Pan American Airways, made promises that
inspired demands for a first-class facility, for both hydroplanes and land
planes. If they provided such an
airport, NYRBA would make Tampa the base of operations for the company. The Tampa voters approved the plan but the
residents along Bayshore Boulevard, the cities most fashionable neighborhood,
got up in arms. The politicians and the
business community fought. Finally,
with the plan shelved, Pan American in disgust, abandoned the idea of
establishing its base in Tampa and moved to Miami.
During the great depression a
major airline was born. The US Postal
Service awarded it a 142 mile airmail route between St. Petersburg and Daytona
Beach via Tampa, Lakeland and Orlando.
The date was October 15, 1934 and the airline was National Airline. The “fleet” consisted of two second-hand
Ryan aircraft. They later added
ten-passenger Stinson Aircraft. Fate
would have the two airlines, Pan Am and National merging in January 1980.
Tampa’s first airport was
what we now know as Peter O. Knight Airport, where Eastern Air Line and Florida
Air Taxi (Florid Airline) joined National Airline. Tampa’s next civilian airport was converted from the US Army Air
Corp’s “Drew Field” after World War II, later to become the present Tampa
International Airport. The first
airport used at St. Petersburg was Albert Whitted.
This short story is about the
history of Florida Airlines. The
requirement for an air service as provided by “Florida Air Taxi” was a rapid
transport between St. Petersburg and Tampa, though this was just across the bay,
a matter of only a few miles. Those familiar with Tampa as of today, see the
many causeways linking the two cities that didn’t exist in those days. To get from downtown St. Pete to downtown
Tampa required a motor trip or rail trip that took the better part of the
day. The aircraft used for the service
were generally in the three to four passenger size of the day. In the sixties they were flying three Piper
Apaches (one was N01P, the first off the line at Piper), two V-tailed Bonanza
and three Beechcraft B-18's.
The second half of the
sixties saw Florida Air Taxi expanding their route. The idea was a northern
division of Tampa, Ocala and Gainesville.
A southern division of Tampa and Ft. Myers (Page Field, Southwest
Regional did not exist, but Florida took a very active part in its planning).
Ft. Myers was a very
seasonable market, generally from Thanksgiving to Easter. During that period all of the B-18's were
assigned to the southern division and the Apaches to the north. The three Bonanzas were used for charter
work, with one each at Tampa, Gainesville and Ft. Myers. Traffic increases saw the need to replace
the Apaches with Aztecs especially with the addition of US Mail contracts.
Working with the support
provided by National Airlines, the FAA granted an exemption which allowed
Florida to fly aircraft up to 26,200 lbs.
Many times National was over-booked to Ft. Myers and needed the backup
the DC-3 would provide. Initially the
wording of the exemption restricted the use of the DC-3 to one aircraft in the
air. Florida had purchased three
DC-3's, with smooth in-flight tracking , Florida have a second aircraft
take-off as soon as the first had landed, a neat work-around. With National’s support, the FAA relented
and they could fly all three and eventually all seven DC-3's.
The support by National
Airline for Florida Airlines (no longer Florida Air Taxi) to fly DC-3' was soon
to pay off big time. National went on strike, leaving Florida
Airlines the only service between Tampa and Ft. Myers. Florida augmented their station personnel
with some of the National personnel. A
policy that Florida Airline had been operating since its birth was that they
were never over-booked. When a flight
was full and passengers were left over, they just wheeled up another
plane. During the strike, as passengers
checked in they were given a number, as the number was called they
boarded. They flew until the last
passengers was flown. The crew days were long with everyone flying to his max.
Allowed.
About this time Florida
Airlines saw new ownership and the headquarters moved from Tampa to
Sarasota. Sarasota became the first new
addition to the route structure. The
seven DC-3' now made it necessary to expand service. The first change was adding Sarasota and Miami to the Tampa / Ft.
Myers route. Next was to add
Jacksonville to the Tampa/Ocala/Gainesville route. This was not going to be enough and they started to look in other
directions. Another small commuter
airline was available, Shawnee. Shawnee
had started out flying Beech 99's, but switched to DC-3'. Florida wanted, primarily, Shawnee’s routes,
the Bahamas and Ft. Lauderdale, their DC-3'3 were Wright powered and did not
have the same allowable gross weight.
They did want their Martin 404's which were flying very lucrative
gambling junkets to the Casino’s in Freeport and Nassau.
While this was going on a
great effort was underway with Delta Airline for a special operating
arrangement to be known as “The Delta Connection” (what is now common with almost
all Major carriers and commuter’s).
This would require all Florida flights schedules at all city connections
with Delta to connect. This had gone as
far as painting all Florida Airline aircraft to be painted “the Delta
Connection” instead of Florida Airlines.
Delta backed at the last moment unless Florida switched to turbo-prop
aircraft. This would have required
major refinancing and more than Florida wanted, so they stayed with their
DC-3's.
The next added service was
Tallahassee from Tampa and Orlando and Tampa and Orlando. This at the same time that the FAA granted
approval of qualified commuter airlines to operate up to 40 passenger
aircraft. This was a boon to some of
the routes that were restricted to 26/28 passenger flights of the DC-3. A search started for 40 passenger aircraft
and found an airline in Georgia (Air South) that they merged with. They had three Martin 404
‘s operating out of St Simon
Island flying to Waycross, Valdosta and Atlanta and from Atlanta to Hilton
Head. Florida did not make friends in
Georgia as they brought all the Martins to Florida and replaced them with
DC-3's.
About this time National went
on strike again and the Martins and DC-3's did a bang up job, flying more
passengers than they ever had before.
Another big deal was an operating agreement with Icelandic
Airlines. Icelandic did not have
authorization to land in the US, so they would fly as far as Nassau and Florida
picked up the US passengers and flew them to Miami. This actually turned out to be a major problem as Icelandic would
usually be hours and occasionally days late.
Florida’s plane’s would arrive in Nassau to find Icelandic hadn’t left
Europe. The downtime waiting proved
too costly and the agreement was voided.
Florida was doing so well on
their Bahamas schedule, on time and zero flight cancellations, that Air Bahamas
requested thy fly their routes when Bahamas planes were out of service. Florida now had 7 Martin 404's.
Another service provided by
Florida was to the US State Dept. They flew
scheduled flights Miami/Varadero, Cuba for the State Dept. authorized
passengers. The only US airline flying
to Cuba.
Hard times came upon Florida
Airlines when deregulation allowed so many “underfunded” airlines to start
operation. Because they were
underfunded, they had to cut fares so much that they could not survive and took
everyone else down with them. Florida
had programmed additional routes but never got the chance to fly them and
finally filed Bankruptcy. The airline
was purchased with only four of the Martin 404's, the remaining aircraft going
to the creditors.
The new airline was Southern
International Airlines which retained only the Sarasota - Miami - Nassau route. Southern International Airline lasted only one year. One of the Martins - N259S / was claimed
from the scrap dealers, restored, and presently resides in the Martin Museum in
Maryland.