Trans World Airlines American Airline Company

Trans World Airlines was an American airline company which reached the heights of success in the second half of the twentieth century. Together with Pan American World Airways, it was one of the pioneers of commercial air travel in America. In 2001 it was acquired by American Airlines and at the time of its buyout, it had a fleet of 190 aircrafts and was flying to 132 destinations around the world

The history of Trans World Airlines goes back to 1930 when the Western Air Express and Transcontinental Air Transport were merged to create Transcontinental and Western Air. This merger was ordered by the Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown under President Herbert Hoover in order to get an air mail contract. The new airlines offered a plane-only cross country trip which took 36 hours from one coast to another and which initially required an overnight stop at Kansas City. This route came to be known as the Lindbergh Route.

The airline company was badly hit by the 1931 crash of TWA Flight 599 with the result that all Fokker F-10 types of aircraft were grounded. In 1934 the airline was further beleaguered when President Roosevelt cancelled all mail contracts and instead allowed only the Army Air Corps to carry mail. But Trans World Airlines managed to remain in business by getting the company incorporated. Form the end of 1930s the company began to order new aircrafts from Boeing and Lockheed.

The company expanded dramatically from late 1930s onwards under a new management. Under aviation pioneers like Jack Frye, Paul E.Richter and Jack Hamilton, it came to be known as The Aircraft of Flyers. In 1946 TWA began its trans-Atlantic service and by late 1940s and 1950s it had established routes from Europe to Asia and was flying as far as Hong Kong in the East. In 1950 the airline officially changed its name to Trans World Airlines and in the following years it moved its executive headquarters to New York City.

In 1961 Trans World Airlines became the first international airline to have a fleet of all jet aircrafts. The same year it began the practice of showing in flight movies. It became one of the first airlines in the world to make use of the spoke hub distribution paradigm. Under this plan the hub airports were to be designed so that the gates would be close to the street. However this airport designed proved impractical and costly when the Cuban hijacking and later the deadlier Mid-East hijackings required central security checkpoints.

Trans World Airlines continued to expand its operations throughout the 1970s but the long neglect of its trans-Pacific market and the air-cargo market brought financial difficulties from 1980s onwards. It was also hit hard by the airline deregulation of the American domestic market. In 1985 the airline was sold to Carl Icahn whose polices pushed the airline to file for bankruptcy in 1995. The situation was salvaged to some extent in the late 1990s when the airline refocused its priorities in the aftermath of the disastrous 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800. However financial problems resurfaced and the airlines was finally acquired by the American Airlines in April 2001.Wikipedia