Saturday, January 10, 2009


Eastern Air Lines began life on April 19, 1926 as Pitcairn Aviation. Pitcairn won a government contract to fly mail and operated Mailwing single-engine aircraft to fly the US Mail between New York and Atlanta. In 1929 Clement Keys, the owner of North American Aviation, purchased Pitcairn, and in 1930 he changed the name to Eastern Air Transport, and would soon be known as Eastern Airlines. In 1938, the airline would be purchased by World War I flying ace, Eddie Rickenbacker. Rickenbacker pushed Eastern into a period of prodigious growth. Throughout the 1940s, competitors were acquired, more advanced planes were purchased and international routes were opened.
By the 1950s, Eastern's propellers were very prominent up and down the East coast of the United States.
In 1960 Eastern's first jets, Douglas DC-8s arrived, allowing Eastern to open non-stop service from New York City 's Idlewild International Airport to Los Angeles, California. The DC-8s were joined in 1962 by a brand new sister, the Boeing 727. Around this time, Eastern started changing their plane's livery colors to include the dark blue hockey stick design that is now famous in the airline industry.
The 1970s brought dramatic changes in the configuration of Eastern Airlines. Internationalization was begun, and Eastern opened routes to new markets such as Madrid, Mexico City, Santo Domingo, Nassau and London. Services from San Juan 's Luis Munoz Marin International Airport were expanded, and Eastern bought the Lockheed L-1011 jet, which would become known in the Caribbean as El Grandote (the huge one).
Boeing 747s were also introduced for a short time during that period, and Eastern became the official airline of Walt Disney World. Eastern's official ride at Disney's Magic Kingdom park was If You Had Wings.
During the 1970s, Eastern Airlines flights suffered several crashes, one of which became a subject for a Hollywood movie. Eastern Airlines Flight 401 was preparing to land in Miami, Florida in 1972, when the pilots became distracted by a non-functioning gear light. While pre-occupied with fixing the light, the autopilot was inadvertently disengaged, allowing the plane to drift far below its' planned flight path. The flight crashed in the Everglades, near the same site of the ValuJet Flight 592 DC-9 crash 23 years later. In Eastern's flight 401 case, it was rumored that the ghost of the pilot who flew that night was later seen on some Eastern planes that carried parts of the doomed plane. While this was largely an unproven legend, it was the subject of the movie The Ghost Of Flight 401.
In 1975 an Eastern Boeing 727 crashed on landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, killing 113 people. The official cause of the accident was wind shear, a phenomenon that affects the lifting capacity of an airplane's wing, and that can occur in severe weather conditions.

No comments:

Post a Comment