Looking for airmail family tree

[Baldeagle]

Has anybody seen or does anybody have a family tree showing how the early air mail lines evolved into today's major airlines? I'm looking for something showing for instance how Varney Air Lines and Pacific Air Transport eventually merged into what is now United Airlines, and similar for the ancestors of Delta, American, Continental, etc.




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[WallyB]

Go to the library and get R.E.G. Davies' Airlines of the United States since 1914; has exactly what you're looking for.

[The Inspector]

If you can find a copy, a book called 'High Horizons' written for United Airlines by Frank J. Taylor (Library of Congress Catalog Card # 61-14687) to tell it's story covers Varney and all the other airlines that eventually became UAL, it's a seemingly unending narrative of throat cutting, back stabbing, double double dealings, bank and investor fraud, and then there's the underhanded stuff too! My copy is about 47 years old but I periodically re-read it, it makes Frank Lorenzo seem like a Choir Boy.

[Airplanejunkie]

I think I have an airticle from an 1970's vintage Flying Magazine that has a really neat flow chart. I don't think I can post it online but I'll see if I can scan it and send it to you.

[JohnB]

I think I have an airticle from an 1970's vintage Flying Magazine that has a really neat flow chart. I don't think I can post it online but I'll see if I can scan it and send it to you.

That article is in Flying's Sept, 1977 huge 50th anniversary issue. A nice text on aviation history in its own right. The airline chart is very well done.
Coincidently, I was looking at it last night and noted how all the airlines have become 5 or 6...United, Delta, American, US Airways, Alaska...and at the time Southwest hadn't been started or was too small to list.

[Airplanejunkie]

I think I have an airticle from an 1970's vintage Flying Magazine that has a really neat flow chart. I don't think I can post it online but I'll see if I can scan it and send it to you.

That article is in Flying's Sept, 1977 huge 50th anniversary issue. A nice text on aviation history in its own right. The airline chart is very well done.
Coincidently, I was looking at it last night and noted how all the airlines have become 5 or 6...United, Delta, American, US Airways, Alaska...and at the time Southwest hadn't been started or was too small to list.

I did find it. Amazing how much the landscape has changed since then. 18 of the 24 (largest) airlines listed on that chart no longer exist due to merger or bankruptcy.

[The Inspector]

Back in 1960 when I first started subscribing to FLYING, Gill Rob Wilson the Editor in Chief wrote an editorial saying that in the near future there would be 5 or 6 major airlines in the U.S.. As a wiseassed 13 year old I thought' BAH!! Whats he know?'

Somewhere in my stuff I've got two of those gold covered 50th anniversary issues.

[The Inspector]

Baldeagle;

If you are still interested, AMAZON has hardcover copies of Taylors 'High Horizons' for $2.09 and paperbound for .60 cents