Anyone Remember "Mid-Continent Airlines"?

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:CXqXe.341301$x96.120453@attbi_s72...

Well, although I did work at newspapers for 20 years, it wasn't in the
editorial department.


?



However, I *have* searched the local newspaper
archives, and it's incredibly easy to miss stuff. There are no indexes,
and "research" consists of rolling microfilm while scanning back and forth
looking for "keywords" like "Airport". It's a mind-numbing, horrible
job, made worse by the low quality of the film and equipment.


I've searched local newspaper archives as well. I found that newspapers of
this era loved photographs of airplanes. It's easy to spot airplane photos
and the articles you'd be looking for probably included them.



Interestingly, I just discovered last week that Northwest Airlines served
Iowa City with weekly stops, starting in 1930. (I don't know when it
stopped.) This was part of a rail/plane line, where they would fly all
day and ride the rails all night, ending up in Omaha. No mention of this
has ever been made in any book I've found, or by any person I've spoken
with -- but I found it mentioned in a 2002 issue of "Airline Pilot
Magazine", in an article about a Northwest pilot.


I'm more than a bit skeptical about that. It's true that Northwest Airways
(it didn't become Northwest Airlines until 1934) operated the first
coordinated air-rail service in the US (1928), but I don't think they
provided this service to Iowa City. No carrier was able to operate
profitably in that era hauling passengers only, they needed air mail
revenue, and they could only haul mail on their own contract air mail
routes. The route serving Iowa City and Omaha was operated by Boeing Air
Transport.