East to the Dawn by Susan Butler

Author:Susan Butler
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: DaCapo Press

TAT began to have problems. The grandiose TAT style cost a great deal of money; coast to coast by train and plane in forty-eight hours did not appeal to enough passengers to begin to pay expenses. As a result, in spite of all the hoopla and glamour, in the first eighteen months of operation the company lost $2.75 million. Amelia continued working for TAT through the summer, but by October 1930 it had ceased operation.

By that time Amelia was working for the New York, Philadelphia and Washington Airway Corporation (NYPWA). It had been started by two wealthy Philadelphians, Charles Townsend Ludington and his younger brother Nicholas. She was made a vice-president, along with Gene Vidal and Paul Collins, her two good friends, both of whom had also worked for TAT, Paul as superintendent of operations and Gene as a member of the technical staff. Gene was general manager and Paul vice-president of the new line. The NYPWA flew between three high-volume cities—Newark, Camden (servicing Philadelphia), and Washington—every hour on the hour from eight to five, in Lockheed Vegas, Stinson trimotors, and Consolidated Fleetsters. The first flight was September 1, 1930. Stations of the Pennsylvania Railroad were used for picking up passengers and selling tickets.

The airlines were beginning to face the fact that they were not going to make money until and unless women flew; women—and their babies and young children—had to fill the seats, there was no alternative. Amelia, as the most famous female pilot, therefore became a valuable asset to an airline and was treated more seriously. Now she was given real responsibility, as opposed to being an adviser, as she had been at TAT. She was in charge of publicity and the complaint department. One reason behind making her the head of the complaint department was that passenger comfort and discomfort were two sides of the same coin and could be dealt with most efficiently by the same person. A woman’s touch, especially such a famous woman’s touch, could only help. Amelia flew over the line at least once every two days, doing everything from chaperoning a bird, to selling two seats for a pony (which rode standing partly in the aisle), to trying to placate a gentleman who insisted they accept him and his thirteen bags, to dealing with a woman who claimed she would be traveling with a lapdog and showed up with what onlookers described as a young heifer, as well as dealing with the most common complaint—an oversold plane. She had to exercise good judgment, according to Paul Collins, “and get along with men; not only those who had never flown before and were petrified but the kind who wrote letters saying ‘I’m an old army flyer myself and yur engines sound punk to me.’ ”

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