April 2019 • Nebraskaland 49
A Boeing 80A at Omaha Municipal Airport, June 5, 1930. Mayor Richard Lee Metcalfe stands in center. Boeing Air Transport
(today's United Airlines) took over airmail fl ights in 1927 and introduced its tri-motor Model 80 the following year. More than
an airmail plane, the 80A carried 18 passengers in its heated, leather-upholstered cabin, where a stewardess attended to their
needs. HN RG 3882-1-25-1
been a preferred land route across Nebraska. Now it became
an aerial highway.
Forced landings and crashes were common, and pilots
were vulnerable to changes in weather. Fog was especially
deadly. Then as now, pilots had to see the ground in order to
land safely. They often carried fl ares to drop. That at least
marked ground level.
Nebraska's fi rst airmail fatality occurred near Marquette in
1928 when a pilot crashed into a tree. He had been fl ying low
to avoid headwinds. The pilot survived, but he was carrying
a passenger who did not.
Night fl ying added other risks. The Post Offi ce staged its
fi rst coast-to-coast round-the-clock fl ight on Feb. 22-23,
1921. Pilot Jack Knight fl ew in darkness from North Platte
to Chicago, following bonfi res along the way. When the Post
Offi ce began regular overnight fl ying in 1924, beacon lights
marked the route's emergency landing fi elds.
Radio was another exciting new technology. Experiments
with two-way radios aboard airmail planes began roughly
the same time that consumers were starting to buy radio
receivers for their homes. In December 1923, Jack Knight
and a government radio engineer kept in touch with Omaha
for 100 miles, and checked in while passing Mead and Grand
Island. But it took several more years for radio to become
common on airmail planes.
This early era was brief. Boeing Air Trans port (today's
United Airlines) took over airmail fl ights in 1927. Three years
later, Boeing began carrying both mail and passengers in its
new tri-motor Model 80, a big metal-clad biplane with an
enclosed, leather-upholstered cabin in which a stewardess
attended to passengers' needs. In just 10 years, much of what
we take for granted in aviation had gone from novelty to a
way of life.
Based on Kathleen Alonso, "Trail above the Plains: Flying
the Airmail through Nebraska from 1920 to 1930," Nebraska
History (Winter 2018). See history.nebraska.gov