In 1928, an air traveler making an extensive trip would be likely to fly in seven or eight different types of planes. He might step into a Fokker tri-motor, change to a single-engined Boeing, ride for some distance in a Ford tri-motor or a Whirlwind-powered _Travel Air_, and finish his trip in a Curtiss _Carrier Pigeon_. The planes usually flew low, at between one and two thousand feet. Here the air was usually rough and a good percentage of air travelers were troubled with airsickness. The planes landed every few hundred miles to refuel. They were noisy and heated only by exhaust gases from the engines, which usually furnished more sickly fumes than heat. Little food, if any, was served, and a coast-to-coast journey took thirty-three hours.
Though 1926 was the official start of American air transport, the first two years of its existence were years of experimentation. It was not until the country’s imagination had been fired by the flights of Lindbergh, Byrd, Chamberlain, and others that air transport emerged from its experimental stage. By 1927 the bigger minds in airline services had realized that the time was coming when provisions must be made to carry passengers on a large scale. It was not until 1928, with the arrival of powerful radial engines and better airplane designs, that air transport began to show real prospects. It was two years after the first beginnings of air transport that John Monk Saunders, the author, paid over $400 for an air passage from Los Angeles to New York, and became the first transcontinental air passenger.
Although its aircraft production had been mainly for the Army and Navy, the Boeing Aircraft Company also was in the air transport business through its Chicago-San Francisco air mail route. Boeing’s inventive genius was turned to air transport problems and created, first, the Boeing 40-B4 four-passenger and mail plane. Then came the big twelve-passenger, radial-powered, tri-motor plane, called the “Pioneer Pullman of the Air.” This ship, Boeing 80-A, helped to reduce the coast-to-coast transport time to twenty-seven hours. When the 80-A was introduced the Boeing Air Transport and the National Air Transport had been merged to form United Air Lines, the first transcontinental airline.