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Commercial Aviation History was made on March 3, 1919 when Seattle-based aircraft manufacturer William Boeing and pilot Eddie Hubbard carried 60 letters from Vancouver's Coal Harbour to Seattle, marking the first international airmail delivery. The first commercial cargo flight in Canada took place in October 1913, when Montréal newspapers were carried from Montréal to Ottawa. Unfortunately the aircraft crashed on the return takeoff. In 1919 the Canadian Pacific Railway requested parliamentary approval to amend its charter to include air transportation. The government extended regulation to cover the fledgling industry by passing the Aeronautics Act (1919), which created the Air Board to consider such requests. The first commercial passenger flight took place in 1920, when 2 bush pilots flew a fur buyer north to The Pas, Manitoba from Winnipeg. One month later, the first regular services were initiated when Imperial Oil chartered several Junkers aircraft to ferry men and supplies from Edmonton to the newly discovered oil fields at Fort Norman (now Tulita), NWT. From 1920 to 1937 air transport expanded rapidly, although it still comprised a large number of small carriers, operating predominantly north-south routes, feeding traffic from the railways to the interior. In 1927 the Post Office authorized air delivery in cases where winter interrupted surface transportation. Bush pilot Grant McConachie formed United Air Transport in 1933, with one Fokker Universal aircraft. In 1938 the company became Yukon Southern Air Transport, connecting Vancouver, Edmonton and the Yukon. McConachie later became president of Canadian Pacific Air Lines. When United Airlines' first flight from Seattle to Vancouver arrived on 1 July 1934, more people were on hand to greet the aircraft than were on board. (The Boeing 247D could carry only 10 passengers.) Source: www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca |
