Fly United to Chicago in Only Eight Hours!
by Paula Bosse
How many buildings can you identify? (click for larger image)
by Paula Bosse
Dallas, Texas as seen from United Air Lines passenger transport. The airplane has brought Dallas and Forth Worth within eight hours travel to Chicago and only one business day’s travel from New York.
Back when it took all day to fly to New York from Dallas.
This is another great aerial photo by the Fairchild Aerial Survey company, probably taken by Lloyd M. Long. Date-wise? Late-1920s? Before the Trinity was straightened (beginning in 1928), with land being cleared in the area that would become Dealey Plaza? 1928-ish? Or could it have been the very early 1930s? The United Air Lines promotional postcard was issued around 1932 or 1933.
It wasn’t until 1933 that United introduced its new Boeing “twin motor airline transports” and boasted that they would finally “bring the city within eleven and a half hours of New York City” (Dallas Morning News, Aug, 16, 1933).
Below is a photo from a Dallas newspaper ad showing one of United’s planes from the earlier, more carefree days of 1932, when passengers were still trudging through the skies at a more leisurely pace.
United Air Lines ad, detail, 1932
And an even earlier ad, from 1931, when a flight from Love Field to Chicago was nine hours long (today a direct flight from Love Field to Chicago takes about two hours and fifteen minutes). And if you wanted to continue to NYC, you had to board another plane and fly from Chicago to New York, adding another six and a half hours!
1931 ad
FLY
De Luxe Tri-Motored Ford Planes Manned by 2 Licensed Transport Pilots
NAT provides the most luxurious and modern plane service out of Dallas … every ship on the line is a Ford … tri-motored with the famous Wasp engines … two (instead of one) pilots … both licensed transport flyers. Meals aloft included in fare … magazines, maps, stationery … lavatories.
Air Transportation is More Than a Plane in the Sky!
When you fly with the pioneer, dependable National Air Transport division of United Air Lines, you ride with the largest air transportation corporation in the world. NAT and other divisions of United Air Lines have had 5 years’ experience … 25,000,000 miles of flying! … and employ only skilled ground crews and gov’t licensed mechanics. Fly NAT and enjoy the finest transportation equipment … U.S. lighted airway … radio … U.S. weather reports.
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In an interesting side-note, the first pilot to fly a mail plane between Kansas City and Dallas (on May 12, 1926) was Richard Dobie, brother of Texas literary legend, J. Frank Dobie. In 1926 he flew a Curtiss Carrier Pigeon; in 1933, he’d worked his way up to the speedy and powerful Boeing. He flew for United for several years.
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Sources & Notes
Top image is a promotional postcard, found on eBay.
Read more about the tri-motor airplane (manufactured by the Ford Motor Company and affectionately known as the “Tin Goose”) in the article “Ford’s Tri-Motor” by Edward J. Vinarcik (Advanced Materials and Processes, Oct. 2003) here.
All images larger when clicked.
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Copyright © 2015 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
As a side note to Paula’s side note I’d like to mention that she helped me post an identification on the Dallas History Phorum of the Curtiss Carrier Pigeon that was suspended from the ceiling of the 1933 Dallas Automobile Show, held in conjunction with the State Fair of that year.
I’d never heard of Dobie’s kid brother aviator, but thanks to Flashback Dallas I do now. Found that Richard Dobie in 1930 was living in Dallas, and I’m now going to wonder if he wasn’t in some way or another involved in having the plane at the car show.
By 1933 these first generation mail planes were obsolete and had been recently withdrawn from regular service. Perhaps Dobie (Richard, that is) pulled a string or two to get a free or really cheap mail plane to display at the car show. It could even be the very plane he flew to Dallas on that first mail run in 1926.
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I can identify some of the more well known buildings: the Old Red Courthouse, Wilson, Praetorian, Adolphus, Sanger, Busch, Neiman Marcus, Magnolia, Medical Arts, Santa Fe, Baker Hotel, Dallas National Bank, Gulf States, Titche-Goettinger, Tower Petroleum and most significantly the YMCA building which is under construction on the right center of the photo. Most of the references I have seen say it was built in 1931 but this Dallas Morning News article – http://goo.gl/bCjfLS – says it was supposed to be complete in the fall of 1932. So this photo is probably 1932.
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Missed these initially but you can also see the 1889 post office and the 1930 post office buildings.
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