air cargo and airmail

On an experimental basis, United Airlines launched a daily cargo service from New York to Chicago on 23rd December 1940, exclusively reserved for express freight and mail. It was operated with DC-3 passenger aircraft, and remained traditional in its commercial approach. It closed down on 31st May 1941.

Although the entry of the United States into the war slowed the growth of civilian airfreight,it brought about a rapid development of military freight. From then on, civilian and military activities were tightly knit. In March 1942, the airlines began to operate the first domestic military freight services under contract. Pennsylvania Central Airlines ran the Washington/Chicago sector, while Continental opened the first transcontinental freight service from San Francisco (California) to Harrisburg (North Carolina). The privilege of providing the first scheduled cargo link goes to a regional airline of modest size: Hawaiian Airlines. This was a civilian service, but directly linked to the new war footing of the United States. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7th December 1941, the sea connections between the different islands in the archipelago were temporarily broken. The Hawaiian Airlines Company was given the job of re-establishing a certain minimum of communications for passengers, mail and urgent freight. After receiving United States Air Cargo Certificate No 1 from the CAB, it began to operate a little “inter-island cargo network” on 20th March 1942, with the aid of two converted Sikorsky amphibian aeroplanes.

After interrupting its “one-way line” from New York to Chicago at the end of May 1941, United operated a new New York/Chicago/Salt Lake City cargo service for seven months, between November 1942 and June 1943. It achieved its goal on 16th October 1943 when it established its first scheduled civilian transcontinental cargo service from New York to San Francisco using Douglas DC-3 Cargoliners. Although it was a civilian service, it was of course primarily devoted to the requirements of the war effort.

American Airlines could not remain in the background for long. In reply to the operational initiative from United, it countered with a commercial innovation. On 14th September 1944, it threw off the yoke of the Railway Express Agency, and published the first airfreight tariff in the modern sense of the word: “American Airlines Airfreight tariff No 1”. 4 United Airlines, which up to that point had shown a certain amount of institutional caution,speeded its pace and published its own first “tariff” in February 1946. In the meantime, in July 1945, American Airlines and TWA had started up their own transcontinental freight service.

A new American product:airfreight

Airfreight became the up-and-coming new sector for the American companies. They threw themselves into it with enthusiasm. Airfreight has its own characteristics and philosophy. Nowhere else is it possible to gain better insight into its true nature than in a remarkable brochure, much ahead of its time, published in 1944 by American Airlines. In particular, one section reads:

In addition to this visionary text, many more superficial documents were predicting a glorious future for airfreight. Some even announced that “the time is not far off when airfreight will attain passenger volume in revenue and then go beyond”. Others imagined transporting raw materials by air:

This text did not come from just anybody: it was signed “Jack Frye”, the prestigious President of TWA. For many, there was a confusion between the hard necessities of a war economy and the rules of an economy at peace. The greater the illusion, the deeper the fall and the disappointment.

Airfreight differed from Air Express in several respects. First of all the marketing was different. Air Express was marketed by a single agency on behalf of all the participating companies whose capacities were pooled and made available to all. Airfreight was a product specific to each airline, and was marketed by the company itself or by intermediaries – freight forwarders.

Secondly, it differed in its rate structure. The rates for airfreight were at once much lower than those for Air Express, and had a different structure:

Rate levels in US cents per ton-mile:

Finally, it differed in respect of the ground equipment required. The physical processing of airfreight required installations and handling equipment,which were not available in most airports in 1947. The expansion of airfreight demanded costly investments, both for the airlines and for the airports. Without them, any time gained in the air would have been lost on the ground.

The 'Flying Tigers' - the US Volunteer Group
flew Curtiss P-40s with distinctive tiger shark markings. Air Cargo News UK

American Airlines DC-3. RAF Museum