Eastern Airlines was one of the “Big Four” airlines that dominated the passenger airline business in the United States for nearly 50 years. Of the four, Eastern Airlines probably also had the most turbulent history.
The birth of Eastern Airlines is associated with the name of Clement Keys, a former financial editor of The Wall Street Journal who was an untiring promoter of multimillion-dollar aviation corporations in the 1920s and 1930s. In early 1929, Keys decided to purchase a small Philadelphia-based airline known as Pitcairn Aviation, Inc., that had been formed on September 15, 1927. Keys then sold Pitcairn to North American Aviation, then a holding company for a number of airline and aircraft companies in which he was one of the key shareholders. On January 17, 1930, Pitcairn's name was changed to Eastern Air Transport, Inc. and soon after, the airline expanded its routes to include Atlanta, Miami, and Boston and in August to Richmond, Virginia. Its fleet at the time consisted of three Ford Trimotors and two Fokker F-X aircraft. These were joined soon by Curtiss Condors and Kingbirds. World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker served as general manager of Eastern.
While most of the major airlines were focusing on transcontinental flights, Eastern's specialty was the East Coast, and it was here that it established a near monopoly. Through 1933, the airline acquired contracts for a number of routes that spanned from New York to Miami. Eastern catered to the high demand for quick passenger travel between the northeastern states and the vacation areas of Florida.
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