Flight In The 1930's

douglas dc-3

One of the things that I am most interested in relation to the 1930's and the Great Depression is the idea of leisure travel. We have talked a lot in class about trains and we have touched on automobiles and trailers, but we haven't really discussed commercial airline travel. Hence, I have decided to explore that for this open topic post.

Two types of planes were common during the 1930's. The first was a Douglas DC-3. The plane, pictured above, was the most successful passenger aircraft of that time period. By 1939, 3 out of every 4 American commercial passengers flew on this kind of plane. Cruising speed for this plane was about 185 mph. By World War II the Douglas DC-3 was adopted for use by the military and renamed the Douglas C-47. Another popular plane was the Boeing 314 Clipper (pictured below). It was designed and manufactured during the 1930's and was essentially a huge flying boat. The plane typically featured four cabins, flush toilets and sometimes even a bridal suite. In 1943, President Roosevelt made the first flight by a president on board one of these planes.

boeing clipper

Another thing that I found very interesting about the airline industry was work of flight attendants, which typically today is a field dominated by women. In the 1920's the flight attendants, or cabin boys, were typically young men of small stature who "loaded luggage, reassured nervous passengers, and helped people get around the plane." On May 15th, 1930, however, Boeing Air Transport introduced the first female flight attendant. However, in order to get women into the field, men had to be convinced. "Ellen Church, a registered nurse, is credited with convincing Steve Stimpson, manager of Boeing's San Francisco office, that women could work in a role previously limited to men. She persuaded the company that nurses were best able to tend to ailing passengers. Thus, nurses aboard the Boeing Model 80 became the first female flight attendants, for the salary of $125 per month." Female air stewardesses, however, had to fit very specific requirements - they had to be 5'4'' or shorter, no more than 118 pounds, between the ages of 20 and 26 and had to be single.

And, of course, the people flying in the 1930's were from the upper echelon of society. Flying provided speed and convenience, but the insurance on it was expensive compared to that of train travel. Many of the commercial flyers during the 30's were manufacturer's representatives and banking representatives. Air travel was not for the poor or the middle class. To get an idea of how new commercial flying was, however, it was said that "other statistics state that the number of passenger miles traveled in the United States increased 600 percent from 1936 to 1941, a growth that was very largely due to the DC-3. But even as late as 1939, flying travelers made up just 7.6 percent of the long-distance train market."