1930
- March: Service added to Janesville, Wisconsin; Rockford and Elgin, Illinois.
- May: Service added on a weekly basis from Minneapolis to Sioux City, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska
- June 6: Ford Tri-Motor NC7739 crashes in Chicago.
- July 1: Northwest moves its operations base to St. Paul’s Holman Field (today’s St. Paul Downtown Airport). The first ground radio installation is purchased.
1931
- February 2: Northwest resumes “international” service to Winnipeg. In a compromise to satisfy both U.S. and Canadian governments, Northwest flies to the border town of Pembina, N.D., where mail and passengers transfer to Western Canada Airways for the last 67-mile leg to Winnipeg.
- May: Two 8-passenger Sikorsky S-38 amphibians are purchased to serve Duluth; service is added using seaplanes and an amphibian base in Lake Superior.
- May 17: NWA’s first Pilot, Charles “Speed” Holman, is killed in a crash of his private aerobatic aircraft when performing at the opening of the Omaha, Nebraska airport. “Speed’s” funeral is one of the most-attended in Minnesota history, and the downtown St. Paul airport is named Holman Field in his honor.
- June 2: Service expands to Bismarck, Valley City and Jamestown, North Dakota.
- The fleet expands with the purchase of seven-passenger Travelair 6000s.
- Arthur R. Rogers of Minneapolis is elected president of Northwest Airlines.
1932
- The Great Depression continues to affect mail volume and passenger loads, especially on services where railroads remain competitive. The route from the Twin Cities to Sioux City and Omaha is terminated.
1933
- March 2: The push begins to overcome poor economic conditions by creating valuable services no other air carrier had yet performed. NWA’s route map reaches west past Bismarck to include the Montana points of Glendive, Miles City, and Billings.
- October 23: Northwest’s scheduled flights now reach Spokane, Washington, via Helena, Butte, and Missoula, Montana.
- October 31: Dickinson, North Dakota receives service as an intermediate stop on the Bismarck-Billings run.
- October 31: Due to cuts in the mail subsidy, the Fox River Valley route to Green Bay is terminated, as is the amphibious route from the Twin Cities to Duluth. Stops at Madison, Wisconsin are also cut.
- December 3: Northwest achieves the “northern transcontinental” route to Seattle and Tacoma.
- The Lockheed Orion, a wooden-frame, six- passenger, retractable-gear monoplane capable of 180 mph cruise, joins the fleet.
1934
- February 1: President Roosevelt cancels all air mail contracts. In the reshuffle, Northwest loses the Chicago-Fargo route.
- April 16: Northwest is reincorporated under Minnesota law as Northwest Airlines, Inc. Col. Lewis I. Brittin, founder and general manager of Northwest Airways, resigns. Shreve M. Archer is elected president.
- December 31: Northwest buys back the Chicago-Fargo mail contract.
- Northwest adds the metal twin engine Lockheed 10A Electra to the fleet.
1935
- October 10: Northwest resumes “true” international service to Winnipeg, eliminating transfer at Pembina.
- Lewis M. Leffingwell is elected president of Northwest Airlines.
1936
- June: Frank Hulse and Ike Jones buy a controlling interest in Southern Airways of Georgia, a fixed-base operator and flight school that becomes the corporate predecessor of Southern Airways, Inc.
1937
- July 15: Croil Hunter is named president, the first Northwest Airlines operating officer to hold this title.
- The twin-engine Lockheed 14 “Zephyr” enters service with Northwest.
1938
- January 10: Flight 2, enroute from Butte, Montana to Billings, experiences extreme turbulence over the Bridger Mountains, causing the Lockheed 14H Super Electra’s tail section to flutter. The vibrations – which are magnified due to a design flaw – shake the entire tail unit off the aircraft and it crashes, killing all eight passengers and two Pilots. All Lockheed Super Electras in the U.S. are grounded the next day as emergency modifications are developed. Northwest will remove the Super Electra from its fleet following three subsequent crashes in 1939. The Pilot for this particular flight was Nick Mamer, an aviation pioneer in the Pacific Northwest who had actually run a short-lived airline out of Spokane before joining NWA.
- Northwest develops the first practical aviation oxygen mask, making possible high-altitude flying over the Rocky Mountains.
- May 14: Service expands to Portland, Ore., and Yakima, Wash.
1939
- January 13: Flight 1, operated by a Lockheed 14H Super Electra, catches on fire in its cockpit and crashes outside Miles City, Montana after departing that town for Billings. The two passengers and both Pilots were killed in the crash. The cause is determined to be a faulty fuel valve which allowed a leak to happen next to the aircraft’s electrical system.
- March 6: Service to Madison, Wisconsin resumes.
- Northwest puts its first Douglas DC-3 into service. The twin-engine workhorse carries 21 passengers at 140 mph cruise speed. Northwest hires its first stewardess to work on the new DC-3.
- Frustrated by inconvenient rail service between his home town and Chicago, Walter Olen, president of the Four Wheel Drive Automobile Company of Clintonville, Wis., trades a company truck for a four-seat Waco biplane. FWD’s company air shuttle service is the predecessor of North Central Airlines.
- December 6: Zimmerly Air Transport begins training civilian pilots at the Lewiston State School in Idaho.
Timeline Navigation
Click on the links below or use the top navigation to read through the Northwest Family history, decade by decade:
