Here's the story of the first airline that kept crashing their seaplanes.
Early air travel for the everyday civilian could be a little unpleasant to say the least. It could be turbulent, fraught with uncertainty and a little terrifying. If you’d flown on the St. Petrsburg-Tampa Airboat Line, which lasted for just four months, you might have risked getting your feet wet. Here’s how a company used seaplanes to transport passengers and became the first airline.
The Route
On January 1st, 1914, the worlds first airline using heavier than air transport took off. It operated between St. Petersburg (Florida) and Tampa in the USA. If you wanted to travel between the two cities in 1913, you had several options, some of which would take you nearly a day: it was 2 hours by boat, 20 hours by car and 4-12 hours by train. By comparison, using an airplane meant your journey would take 23 minutes.
The Daring Pilot
The first flight's pilot was Tony Jannus. He was an experienced test pilot, the sort of dashing chap you’d imagine of those early years. Even in 1914, he had a full résumé having tested military planes, flown long-distance missions and even piloting the first tests of airborne machine guns. Here's a short 6-minute video about Jannus and the world's first airline.
The Airplane
The small biplane the company used was the Benoist XIV. Two of these were built, No. 43 and No. 45. They had unstaggered wings, small pontoons and a pusher prop engine. The passenger would sit next to the pilot in a cozy yet somewhat draughty open cockpit. Before the airline got going, the No.43 had already been involved in an accident and repaired.
The First Passengers
The first paying passenger was Abram C. Pheil, former mayor of St. Petersburg. Their 21-mile (34-kilometer) flight across the bay to Tampa took 23 minutes. When queried about the safety of the operation, Fansler said, ‘there is no more liability of accident in one of the boats than in an automobile, and the airboat will seldom be more than five feet above the water.’
Fixed the price of a one-way ticket at $5 for the 22-minute trip. This is the equivalent of $124.26 in today’s money. The airline operated successfully for the three-month period with a total of 172 regular trips.
However, on several occasions, the airplane had to land in choppy water when it experienced engine problems due to dirt in the carburetors. One pontoon and a portion of one lower wing were damaged on one occasion. Undeterred, the pilot ‘got the boat into the air again with skill and flew on in with a portion of the wing hanging like the broken wing of a bird.’
The airline ceased its flights in April 1914, mostly due to tempory winter residents of the state moving North for the summer meaning there was little demand for costly transport across the Tampa Bay.
The No. 43 aircraft was sold to an individual to carry on a passenger service of sorts in the form of sightseeing flights. This plane crashed in July 1914 with an overweight passenger onboard. It was salvaged and rebuild. On a later occasion, the plane crashed again and was destroyed when a wing fell off the aircraft.
The second of the old St. Petersburg-Tampa line aircraft, No. 45, was also involved in a series of accidents whilst carrying passengers. It crashed on February 15, 1915, with the passenger miraculously escaping injury but with the pilot losing several teeth. It was repaired but, unsurprisingly, was completely destroyed in a later accident. Sadly, on October 12, 1916, Tony Jannus was training Russian pilots when his plane crashed into the Black Sea. His body was never recovered. His legacy lives on in the Tony Jannus Award.
Despite the airline only existing for a mere four months with all sorts of ups and downs, the company made history and demonstrated that aircraft could be used successfully to provide scheduled and profitable transportation services for passengers. It was the birth of the airline.
Build Your Own Seaplane
If you’re wanting to recreate a piece of history (possibly with just as many mishaps and crashes), maybe you should build our new Flite Test kit, the FT Sea Angel! It’s a great plane for taking off from water and can also be used on snow and grass.
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Article by James Whomsley
Editor of FliteTest.com
Contact: james@flitetest.com
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/projectairaviation
From Wikipedia: In 1984, a full-scale flying replica was constructed by Florida Aviation Historical Society for the 70th anniversary of the flight. This aircraft is now on loan to the St. Petersburg Museum of History in St. Petersburg, Florida.[2]
A second replica of the 1913 Lark of Duluth was constructed by the Duluth Aviation Institute and FAA certified to commemorate the 100th anniversary of commercial aviation.[3]
Recreation
A full-scale replica of the Model XIV is being built by Kermit Weeks at Fantasy of Flight that they plan on flying on the centennial of Tony Jannus' first scheduled commercial flight on January 1, 2014.[4]
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