A marathon phone call from American Airlines' boss gave the world the DC-3
C. R. Smith wanted a plane passengers could sleep in, and Donald Douglas was not keen. During one very long telephone call, the American Airlines chief talked him round, clinching it with a promise to buy 20. The result, first flown in December 1935, became the celebrated DC-3.
The problem was width. The existing DC-2 cabin measured 66 inches across, too narrow for berths side by side, and American needed something to retire its Curtiss Condor II biplanes. The Douglas Sleeper Transport that took off on December 17, 1935, exactly 32 years after the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, stretched the cabin to 92 inches. Swap its 14 to 16 bunks for 21 seats and you had the DC-3. No separate prototype existed; the first one rolled off the line behind seven sleepers and went straight to American, which began service with it on June 26, 1936.
The airline itself was a patchwork. Robertson Aircraft Corporation, created in Missouri in 1921, started carrying mail on April 15, 1926, and it merged with Colonial Air Transport into a holding company in 1929. In 1930 that company, a union of more than eighty small carriers, became American Airways, reorganising its scattered routes into a connected network in 1934 when mail contracts dried up.
Its influence on aircraft design recurred. In 1966 American asked manufacturers for a widebody smaller than the Boeing 747 that could still fly long routes from shorter runways. McDonnell Douglas answered with the DC-10 trijet, and on February 19, 1968, the two companies announced an order that began with 25 planes. The carrier also launched the AAdvantage loyalty scheme on May 1, 1981, which had over 115 million members by 2021.
Hard times hit in 2011, when parent AMR Corporation sought bankruptcy protection. A 2013 merger with US Airways kept the better-known American name and produced the biggest airline anywhere. Today it runs almost 6,800 daily flights to nearly 350 destinations in 48 countries from ten hubs led by Dallas Fort Worth. Economy legroom has shrunk too: under a 2017 plan, the rearmost rows on some 737 MAX 8 jets dropped from 31 to 29 inches.
Source: American Airlines
