Pacific Air Transport was an early US airline, formed in 1926 for carrying mail as well as passengers. It was acquired two years later by

Boeing Air Transport United Airlines is the third largest airline in the world, with 86,852 employees (which includes the entire holding company United Airlines Holdings) and 721 aircraft. It was the brainchild of William Boeing and emerged from his consolidation of n ...

Early history

Pacific Air Transport (PAT) was formed in January 1926 by Vern C. Gorst, an Oregon bus line operator. He saw the potential competition that would arise from the award by the

United States Post Office Department The United States Post Office Department (USPOD; also known as the Post Office or U.S. Mail) was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department, officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the postmas ...

of contracts to carry airmails. Airmail Route CAM 8 was planned by the USPO to carry the post from Seattle, Washington to Los Angeles, California via several intermediate cities. Gorst arranged for the route to be carefully surveyed by T. Claude Ryan in one of his new Ryan M-1 aircraft. This was because the airmail aircraft would have to traverse the 7,000 ft

Siskiyou Mountains The Siskiyou Mountains are a coastal subrange of the Klamath Mountains, and located in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon in the United States. They extend in an arc for approximately from east of Crescent City, California, northea ...

on the Oregon-California border.

Early operations

Gorst's new airline successfully bid for Route CAM 8 and contracted to purchase a fleet of ten

Ryan M-1 The Ryan M-1 was a mail plane produced in the United States in the 1920s, the first original design built by Ryan.Taylor 1989, p. 774. It was a conventional gear parasol-wing monoplane with two open cockpits in tandem and fixed, tailskid undercar ...

mailplanes. These had a four-seat enclosed cabin because Gorst planned to carry fare-paying passengers as well as mail and express parcels. The service was inaugurated on 15 September 1926 after arrangements had been made for the provision of makeshift lights and beacons, and persuading the Standard Oil Company to paint the names of towns on the roofs of its buildings. Despite these precautions, by the end of the winter, three of the M-1 aircraft had been lost. The hardy passengers had to pay $132 for the doubtful privilege of being crammed in among the mailbags for the 18-hour flights. Intermediate landings were made for fuel and mail at Portland and Medford in Oregon and San Francisco, Fresno and Bakersfield in California. The route was operated daily in each direction.

Acquisition by Boeing Air Transport

Pacific Air Transport's main north-south airmail and passenger route continued in operation throughout 1927. However, Gorst did not make comfortable profits as the airmail loads were not as bulky as on some other CAM routes. He therefore sought the help of aviation entrepreneurs. Bill Boeing proved to be interested in the airline and his

acquired control of PAT on 1 January 1928. This immediately provided a market for new aircraft as six four-passenger

Boeing 40 The Boeing Model 40 was a United States mail plane of the 1920s. It was a single-engined biplane that was widely used for airmail services in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s, especially by airlines that later became part of United Airlin ...

Bs were supplied to the airline during 1928. On 17 December 1928, PAT merged into Boeing Air Transport, but continued to operate as a separate division, retaining its own identity..

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * {{Portal bar, Companies, Aviation Defunct airlines of the United States Airlines established in 1926 Airlines disestablished in 1928

Early history

Early operations

Acquisition by Boeing Air Transport

See also

References