1946 - Transportation

Transportation

The Transcontinental & Western Airlines (TWA) Lockheed Constellation Star of Paris takes off from Washington, D.C., February 5, lands at New York's La Guardia Airport, and arrives at Paris 20 hours later with 36 passengers and eight crew members, having refueled en route at Gander, Newfoundland, and Shannon Ireland. The passengers include businessmen, diplomats, two fashion designers, and a physician delivering penicillin (see Constellation, 1943); round-trip coach fare is $675 at a time when the average annual income for Americans is about $2,500. TWA inaugurates the first service between the United States and Italy March 31 and soon continues from Rome to Cairo.

KLM introduces scheduled service between Amsterdam and New York May 21, becoming the first European airline to have scheduled flights across the Atlantic (see 1941).

London's Heathrow Airport opens on a formal basis May 21 (see 1929). The airport has been used since January for flights to Buenos Aires.

British transatlantic passenger air service to North America starts July 1 as BOAC begins flying Lockheed Constellations between London and New York. Scheduled flying time is 19 hours, 45 minutes.

SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System) is created by a consolidation of Sweden's AB Aerotransport, Denmark's DDL, and Norway's DNL to operate on transatlantic routes.

Pan American Airways inaugurates a great circle route to Tokyo.

Air India is created July 29 by a reorganization of Tata Air Lines, whose planes fly passengers at low rates to all of the largest cities of India (see 1932; 1948).

The DC-6 introduced by Douglas Aircraft can carry 70 passengers at 300 miles per hour with cargo, mail, and luggage (see 1938). Douglas has been the leading U.S. aircraft producer during the war but is only slightly ahead of Lockheed in sales, but the DC-6 gives it a leg up with the first pressurized airplane that can attain altitudes of more than 18,000 feet (see Braniff, 1947; DC-7, 1953).

Alitalia (Aerolinee Italiane Internazionali) is created September 15 with British European Airways holding 30 percent of the shares in the new company.

International Air Transport Association (IATA) is founded. The trade association has 63 member airlines within a year and begins to set policies related to traffic, rates, and fares.

A Berlin-bound American Overseas Airlines plane nosedives into a Newfoundland hill October 3, killing 39 men, women, and children in the worst airline accident thus far.

Texas-born stock manipulator Robert Ralph Young, 49, attracts attention by running full-page newspaper advertisements headlined, "A Hog Can Cross the Nation without Changing Trains, but You Can't." Young has become board chairman of Allegheny Corp. (see New York Central, 1954).

Kaiser-Frazer automobiles challenge the established powers of the U.S. automobile industry. Henry J. Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminum has started the new company with former Willys-Overland president Joseph Washington Frazer, 54, and theirs will be the last major U.S. bid to compete with General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler (see 1950).

Bermuda permits motorcars to operate on the island after a half-century ban on vehicles other than bicycles, horse-drawn carriages and wagons, and motortrucks for special purposes.

Vespa motor scooters are introduced in Italy to provide cheap if noisy transportation. Aircraft maker Enrico Piaggio's works at Pontadera were destroyed by Allied bombers. Piaggio has had his chief engineer, Corradino d'Ascanio, design the scooter to give him a product that enables him to resume production, and he calls it by the Italian name for wasp.

Race-car driver Barney Oldfield dies at Beverly Hills October 4 at age 68.