Western Airlines: The ooooonly way to fly!

The Western Airlines alumni are in Reno, Nevada for their annual get together. I’ve arranged for Ben Scott, of Scott Motors to present a powerpoint of his historic flight in his Boeing Stearman - following the original airmail route from New York to the San Francisco Bay!

It’s the only way to fly!

Western Airlines was the FIRST regularly scheduled airline in the United States - the first route was Los Angeles to Salt Lake City in 1926.

Western can also be noted for contributing to popular culture with its 1960s advertising slogan, “It’s the oooooonly way to fly!” Spoken by the Wally Bird, an animated bird hitching a ride aboard the fuselage of a Western airliner, and voiced by veteran actor Shepard Menken, the phrase soon found its way into animated cartoons by Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera. Another famous advertising campaign by the airline centered on Star Trek icons William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. Some of their last TV ads, shortly before merging with Delta, featured actor/comedian Rodney Dangerfield.

During the 1970s, they promoted themselves as “the champagne airline” because champagne was offered free of charge to every adult passenger over 21 years old. (As an aside, actor Jim Backus uttered the “Only way to fly!” phrase while piloting an airplane, while somewhat inebriated, in the film It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.)

Western Airlines was also famous for its “Flying W” corporate identity and aircraft livery. Introduced in the mid-1970s, the unique color scheme featured a large red stylized “W” which fused into a red cheatline running the length of an all-white fuselage. This new corporate identity was the subject of litigation by Winnebago Industries, which contended the new “Flying W” was too similar to its own stylized “W” logo. In its final years, Western Airlines slightly modified its corporate identity by stripping the white fuselage to bare metal, while retaining the red “Flying W” (albeit with a dark blue shadow). This color scheme was also affectionately known as “Bud Lite” due to its resemblance to a popular beer’s can design.

Western Airlines was a favorite first class carrier for Hollywood movie stars and frequently featured them in its on board magazine: “Western’s World”. Marilyn Monroe, and many silver screen actors were frequent flyers and the airline capitalized on it. Western had a famous flyer out of Seattle: Captain “Red” Dodge. Red worked previously as a helicopter test pilot, and got involved with CIA flying in his later years when he wasn’t flying as Captain on the DC-10. The movie “Breakout” starring Charles Bronson was based on his daring airlift of a CIA operative out of the courtyard of a Mexican prison. The Mexican government tried to extradite Dodge back to face the jailbreak charges. Red became wealthy leasing brand new government storage units with unlimited government business but never again flew to Mexico.

Yes, indeed. Western’s pilots were a, uh, ‘diverse’ group. There were ex-Luftwaffe, eskimo bush pilots (we’re talking about you Charles), Iron Curtain fighter pilots that escaped to the West, the first Black airline pilot (that’s you Fred), the first woman airline pilots (the first had her first flight with Capt. Ryan in the left seat) … and then there were the vinyard owners, CIA ‘breakout’ pilots, yacht racers, former spray pilots, boy actors, and so many more.

A boring group it wasn’t. We’ve been proud to be a part of it all. I was on the very last official WAL flight, flown by Capt. Ryan, from Anchorage to Salt Lake City, in 1987 as it was merged into Delta Airlines.

Mr. Maven - aka Captain Ryan - started as a brand new flight engineer at Western on March 14, 1966. He retired from Delta Airlines, at age 60, in 1991, and continued to fly search and rescue/humanitarian flights with the Nevada Wing of the Civil Air Patrol, and privately.

Capt. Ryan - known at home as ‘Captain Sir’ - flew with most of the great names in Hollywood back in the day of civilized pre-9/11 air travel. That’s when everybody who was anybody actually flew the airlines. Celebrities from Sammy Davis Jr., to Charo, to Carol Burnett and Jim Nabors, to Leonard Nimoy, to Dean Martin, to Jimmy Stewart, to Ronald Reagan and many, many more sat in my husbands cockpit and entertained the crew.

In fact, Leonard Nimory rode with Capt. Ryan numerous times, even after Star Trek the series was over.

Ben Scott, owner of a Boeing Speedmail, with Addison Pemberton and Larry Tobin, retraced the original Transcontinental Airmail Route in 2008:

(A little crowing, Maven has flown with Ben in the Speedmail. It’s a huge Yippee!)

Ben in the Speedmail (blue and yellow in foreground) with Addison Pemberton in the only still flying Boeing 40, as they make the final leg and cross the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The fabulous end to an epic journey!

You can view a photo log of the entire flight here.

In September 2008, to celebrate 90 years of flying the U.S. mail, three pilots in three vintage mailplanes retraced the original route flown by Airmail pilots in the 1920s. Air & Space followed their trip with daily reports, photos, and feature stories.

At approximately 11:30 a.m. on May 15, 1918, the U.S. Post Office inaugurated regular airmail service with Curtiss JN-4H biplanes, which flew between Washington, D.C. and New York City with a stop in Philadelphia. It took two more years of dogged effort and experimentation, marred by dozens of crashes and 16 fatalities, for the service to fly the mail all the way across the country. By 1927, the Post Office had nursed the airmail service through its infancy and was ready to hand it off to private companies, like Boeing Air Transport and National Air Transport, which eventually developed into United Airlines. With aircraft like the Boeing 40C and Stearman Speedmail and with pilots like Charles Lindbergh, contract mail carriers laid the foundation for the most expansive national air transportation system in the world.

With major sponsorship from Bill Boeing Jr. and Jeppesen, the three pilots departed Long Island, New York, on September 10. Addison Pemberton was in today’s only flying 1928 Boeing 40C, Larry Tobin in a 1927 Stearman C3B, and Ben Scott in a 1930 Stearman 4E Speedmail. The pilots stopped in the 17 cities that served as layovers and fuel depots for the early airmail pilots.