History
In early 1941, at a dinner in the Brown Derby Restaurant in Los Angeles, Air Service veteran John Howard “Jack” Connelly and noted Hollywood agent/producer Leland Hayward formed a business partnership that five years later would evolve into a scheduled commercial airline. Neither man was a stranger to aviation; Connelly was also a former test pilot, airplane salesman, Civil Aeronautics Administration instructor pilot, and inspector for the 1930s-era Soviet Union. Hayward was an active private pilot and was on the board of directors of Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA).
The two men enlisted the support of commercial pilot and photographer John Swope to oversee the training of aviation cadets. Together, they founded a maintenance depot for overhauling training aircraft, a wartime air cargo line, purchased the Civilian Pilot Training program from fixed base operator Sky Harbor Air Service, and set up a military pilot training complex in Arizona consisting of Thunderbird Field No. 1 near Glendale, Thunderbird Field No. 2 at Scottsdale, and Falcon Field in Mesa. First cadets flew on March 22, 1941, and by the end of 1942 the firm had also won a contract from Air Transport Command to operate a cargo service carrying high priority aircraft parts from San Bernardino, CA to all Army Air Corps bases on the US West Coast.
By the end of World War II, Southwest Airways was the largest training contractor in the United States, and trained more than 20,000 pilots from over two dozen countries. After the war, Connelly and Hayward raised $2,000,000 (in 1946 dollars) from investors, including Hollywood notables such as James Stewart and Darryl Zanuck, to expand Southwest into the airline business, pending government approval.
They were awarded a three-year experimental charter from the Civil Aeronautics Board on May 22, 1946 for their feeder service. Scheduled passenger service under the name Southwest Airways began on December 2, 1946, using ten of the plentiful and affordable war surplus C-47s, the military version of the Douglas DC-3, converted for civilian use. During conversions, Jack Connelly developed and patented the “airstep” door, but released it to be used by anyone at no charge. Initial Southwest routes were situated along the Los Angeles – San Francisco coastal corridor, including stops in Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, Monterey, and San Jose, with Medford, Oregon added later.
In September 1955, Southwest became the first Local Service Carrier to be awarded a permanent certificate of operation from the Civil Aeronautics Bureau (CAB), giving investors, creditors, and suppliers more confidence in the stability of the operation.
Connelly and Hayward had originally filed to serve feeder routes not just in California but throughout the Desert Southwest and all the way north to Seattle. With these territories being granted to Bonanza and West Coast, respectively, the “Southwest” name did not accurately denote its service area – and so, in 1958, the company changed its name to Pacific Air Lines (headquartered in San Francisco, but still organized as an Arizona corporation.)
On June 26, 1963, Connelly and Hayward sold their controlling stock interest to Nick Bez of West Coast Airlines; however, Bez was ordered to divest that stock by the CAB. Lloyd Martin and David Grace acquired the shares and installed Mathew McCarthy as Chairman and President and “Mac” Myhre (formerly President of Frontier Airlines) as Executive Vice President and General Manager. Robert Henry (former EVP at Bonanza) replaced McCarthy in the President role in July 1967, as an initial step toward merging those companies along with West Coast – which Nick Bez had been trying to do all along.
Finally, on April 17, 1968, the merger of Pacific, Bonanza, and Air West was completed, creating Air West.
Route Maps
Timetables
- Pacific Air Lines (1958-1968)
- Southwest Airways (1947-1958)
Aircraft
Southwest started service with the plentiful Douglas DC-3 but soon needed to supplement capacity and increase flight speed to keep up with traffic. The Martin 202 and Martin 404 twins brought higher service standards up and down the Pacific coast and Central Valley, but as the 1950s continued and California’s population and business boom accelerated, the turboprop Fairchild F-27 was added – while a similar capacity to the Martin 404, it added speed for higher-traffic sectors.
To better compete on the “trunk” routes Pacific started serving in the 1960s, later in the decade three Boeing 727-100 tri-jets were brought on, but these proved to introduce too much capacity for routes that had not yet matured. In order to maintain jet service and still compete against major carriers like United and Western, the company ordered Boeing 737-200 twin-jets. However, these were not delivered by the time of the merger into Air West and the order was cancelled as soon as consolidation went into effect.
Financial / Annual Reports
Employee Newsletters
Additional features will be added as we work through NWAHC Archive materials. If you have materials from Pacific Air Lines or Southwest Airways like ticket jackets, safety cards, advertising, cabin service items, uniforms, or other items, please contact us with details!
