Braniff International Airways

Braniff Airways, Incorporated

In the fall of 1930, Tom and Paul Braniff once again founded a new airline called Braniff Airways, Incorporated, which was organized on November 3, 1930, and began service on November 13, 1930, between Oklahoma City and Tulsa and Oklahoma City and Wichita Falls Texas. Braniff Airways purchased two six-passenger, 450-horsepower Lockheed L-5 Vega single-engined aircraft capable of cruising at speeds of 150 miles per hour. Braniff's advertising touted the new carrier as the World's Fastest Airline.

Braniff quickly expanded its route system to include Kansas City Fairfax Airport on December 5, 1930. The new service operated nonstop between Kansas City and Tulsa and additional new cities were added in early 1931. By the end of 1930, the airline had added new service to its route map and employed six people and the new service between Tulsa and Kansas City had increased system route mileage to 241 miles. On February 25, 1931, Braniff welcomed in the new year by adding Chicago Midway Airport to its route map. The new service operated nonstop between Kansas City and Chicago once each day. The flight originated at Wichita Falls and continued to Midway Airport with intermediate stops at Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Kansas City.

The summer of 1931 welcomed St Louis to the Braniff system on June 15, with nonstop service offered between St Louis and both Chicago and Tulsa. Additional Lockheed Vegas were added to the fleet during 1931 and 1932.

Braniff's first airmail route

The fledgling airline shut down to reorganize in March 1933, with the company airborne again in less than a year. Paul Braniff, travelled to Washington, DC, to petition for a Chicago-Dallas airmail route. The United States Postal Service granted Braniff their first airmail route soon after, and the new route was inaugurated in May 1934, which effectively saved the company from failure. In early 1935, Braniff became the first airline to fly from Chicago to the U.S.–Mexico border. In August 1935, Paul Braniff left to pursue other opportunities and Charles Edmund Beard was placed in charge of daily operations. In 1954, Beard was appointed president and CEO of Braniff with Fred Jones of Oklahoma City becoming chairman of the board.

Midwestern expansion

On December 28, 1934, Braniff purchased Dallas-based Long and Harman Air Lines, that operated passenger and mail routes from Amarillo to Brownsville and Galveston. Braniff Airways merged with the company on December 28, 1934, and began operating Long and Harman's routes on January 1, 1935, which took the airline from Chicago to Brownsville, Texas, and as far west as Amarillo, Texas.

Wartime service

During the war, Braniff remanded all of its Douglas DC-2 fleet and a substantial number of its new 21-passenger Douglas DC-3 fleet to the United States Army Air Forces. The DC-3 had just entered the fleet in December 1939. All of the Airline's DC-2s were given to the military for wartime service and none were accepted back into the fleet at the end of the war. Besides offering its aircraft to the United States military, it also leased its facilities at Dallas Love Field to the military, which became a training site for pilots and mechanics.

Braniff was given a contract to operate a military cargo flight between Brownsville, Texas, and Panama City/Balboa City, in the Canal Zone. The route was called the Banana Run because Braniff's pilots made agreements with the banana producers in Panama to move their bananas to the United States to sell. Because of the war, they could not fly their produce out of the country, but Braniff devised at least a small way to assist the growers. Because of Braniff's superb service during the war and over the Banana Run, the airline was rewarded with a significant international route award just a year after the war ended.

Aerovias Braniff formed

Thomas Elmer Braniff created a Mexican-based airline, Aerovias Braniff, in 1943. Service was inaugurated in March 1945, after the carrier received its operating permits from the Mexican government. Aerovias Braniff operated domestic flights in Mexico between Nuevo Laredo, Monterrey, and Mexico City, and also between Mexico City, Puebla, Veracruz (city) and Merida, Mexico. The August 1946 Braniff Airways system timetable indicates that Braniff was operating scheduled passenger flights at this time on a roundtrip routing of Chicago - Kansas City - Dallas - San Antonio - Laredo - Nuevo Laredo which connected with the Aerovias Braniff service. The new company, owned by Mr. Braniff, operated three 21-passenger Douglas DC-3s that had been allocated to the carrier from the United States War Surplus Administration in February, 1945.

Mr. Braniff had applied to the federal Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) for authority to merge Aerovias Braniff with Braniff Airways, Inc. However, the Mexican government suspended Aerovias' Braniff's operating permits in October 1946, under pressure from Pan American Airways, Inc., and merger of the two carriers was not approved by the CAB. Braniff was allowed to operate a charter service in Mexico for a brief period in 1947, but that was also discontinued, and service was not commenced again until 1960.

Latin America route award

After World War II, on May 19, 1946, the CAB awarded Braniff routes to the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America, competing with Pan American-Grace Airways, with this airline also being known as Panagra, which Braniff would eventually acquire and merge with during the late 1960s. The CAB awarded Braniff a 7719 statute-mile route from Dallas to Houston to Havana, Balboa, C.Z., Panama, Guayaquil, Lima, La Paz, Asunción, and then to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and also a route from Asunción to São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. At that time, the airline changed its trade name to "Braniff International Airways" (the official corporate name remained Braniff Airways, Incorporated) and flights to South America via Cuba and Panama began on June 4, 1948, with a routing of Chicago – Kansas City – Dallas – Houston – Havana – Balboa, C.Z. – Guayaquil – Lima (Lima service did not begin until June 18, 1948). The route was then extended in February 1949 to La Paz and in March 1949, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Douglas DC-4s and Douglas DC-6s flew to Rio; initially, DC-3s flew Lima to La Paz. Braniff was the first airline authorized by the CAB to operate jet-assisted take-off aircraft (DC-4s) at La Paz.

Braniff inaugurated new service from Lima, Peru, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with a stop at São Paulo, added in October 1950. Service was extended in March 1950 from La Paz to Asunción, Paraguay, and in May 1950 to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Argentine President Juan Perón and his famed wife Evita Perón participated in the festivities at the Palacio Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires. In October 1951, departures from Dallas became daily - three a week to Buenos Aires and four to Rio de Janeiro. Beginning in 1951, flights to South America stopped at Miami, but Braniff did not carry domestic passengers to or from Dallas or Houston to or from Miami.

Mid-Continent Airlines merger

By October 1951, Braniff flew to 29 airports in the US, from Chicago and Denver south to Brownsville, Texas, to Central America, Cuba, and South America.

After months of negotiations, Braniff acquired Mid-Continent Airlines, a small Kansas City-based trunk line, on August 16, 1952. The merger added numerous cities, including Minneapolis/St. Paul, Sioux City, and Sioux Falls in the North; Des Moines, Omaha, and St. Louis in the Midwest; and Tulsa, Shreveport, and New Orleans in the South. The acquisition of the Minneapolis/St. Paul to Kansas City route (with stops in Des Moines and Rochester, Minnesota) was of particular interest to Braniff, as Mid-Continent had been awarded this route instead of Braniff in 1939.

After the merger, Braniff operated 75 aircraft and over 4000 employees, including 400 pilots. In 1955, Braniff was the 10th-largest US airline by passenger miles and 9th-largest by domestic passenger miles.

With the addition of the South America route system, merger with Mid-Continent Airlines, and reduction in mail subsidy on the Mid-Continent system, Braniff International Airways recorded a US$1.8 million operating loss during 1953. Aircraft that were scheduled to be disposed of offset the loss and the company recorded a meager US$11,000 net income. An increase in mail subsidy, requested by Mr. Braniff before his death, was granted in 1954, and the company returned to profitability.

Deaths of the Braniff brothers

On January 10, 1954, Braniff's founder Thomas Elmer Braniff died when a Grumman flying boat owned by United Gas crash-landed on the shore of Wallace Lake, 15 miles outside of Shreveport, Louisiana, due to icing. According to information from Captain George A. Stevens: "Mr. Braniff was on a hunting expedition with a group of important citizens of Louisiana. They were returning to Shreveport from a small duck-hunting lake near Lake Charles, Louisiana, in a Grumman Mallard aircraft with no deicing system. The wings iced up on approach to landing in Shreveport, and the plane lost altitude. One of the wings hit cypress stumps, and the plane crashed against the shore. It caught fire and all 12 lives aboard were lost."

Braniff Executive Vice President Charles Edmund Beard became the first non-Braniff family member to assume the role of president of the airline after Tom Braniff's death. Mr. Beard gathered Braniff employees together at the Braniff hangar at Love Field on January 18, 1954, to announce that the airline would move forward and assured the public that the airline would continue. In February 1954, Mrs. Bess Thurman Braniff was appointed a vice president of the company. She was instrumental in calming the fears of Braniff's creditors, which became concerned, especially after the losses incurred in 1953, quickly followed by the loss of Mr. Braniff.

Paul R. Braniff died in June 1954 from complications from pneumonia and from throat cancer. Tom Braniff's wife, Bess Thurman Braniff, also died in August 1954, of cancer. Tom's son, Thurman Braniff, was killed in a training plane crash at Oklahoma City in 1937, and his daughter Jeanne Braniff Terrell died in 1948 from complications of childbirth. Jeanne Braniff's child died two days after birth and her husband Alexander Terrell died a year later in 1949.

New equipment and facilities

Charles Edmund Beard led Braniff into the jet age. The first jets were four Boeing 707-227s; a fifth crashed on a test flight when still owned by Boeing. Braniff was the only airline to order the 707-227 because their low density and powerful engines were perfectly suited to Braniff's thin and high routes from the US mainland to South America. In 1971, Braniff sold the jets to British West Indies Airways, an airline based in the Caribbean. Boeing 720s were added in the early 1960s. In 1965, Braniff's fleet was about half jet, comprising 707s, 720s, and British Aircraft Corporation One-Eleven jetliners. The long-range Boeing 707-320C intercontinental model was then introduced. However, all the 707s, 720s, and One-Elevens were subsequently removed from the fleet in favor of the ideally suited Boeing 727 Trijet. Braniff's last piston-aircraft schedule was operated with a Convair 340 in September 1967, and the last Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop service was flown in April 1969.

In February 1957, Braniff moved into a new headquarters located temporarily in the new Exchange Bank Building at Exchange Park, a high-rise office development within sight of Dallas Love Field. The airline was required to move into the temporary building until its new 10-story Braniff Tower also in Exchange Park was ready for move-in on Valentine's Day 1958. Braniff remained in this building until December 1978, when it moved into its spacious new Braniff Place World Headquarters on the west side of DFW Airport. The airline opened a maintenance and operations base with over 433,000 square feet on the east side of Dallas Love Field at 7701 Lemmon Avenue in October 1958. The airline occupied the facility until the late 1980s, with the Braniff, Inc. (Braniff II) holding company, Dalfort, remaining there until 2001.

Boeing Super Sonic Transport (SST)

In April 1964, Braniff made deposits on two Boeing 2707 Supersonic Transports, $100,000 per aircraft. This would give Braniff slots number 38 and 44 when the SST began production. President Beard said the two aircraft would be used on the carrier's US-to-Latin America flights, where the Boeing 707 was performing satisfactorily.

When this deposit was made, the SST program was being financed by the US government. In 1971, Congress cancelled the program, against the Nixon administration's wishes.

Greatamerica

In 1964, Troy Post, chairman of Greatamerica Corporation, an insurance holding company based in Dallas, purchased Braniff and National Car Rental as part of an expansion of holdings and growth outside the insurance business. Braniff and National were chosen after Greatamerica CFO Charles Edward Acker identified them as underused and undermanaged companies. Acker had stated in a 1964 study that Braniff's conservative management was hampering the growth that the "jet age" required, in part by cash purchase of new planes instead of financing them, diverting working capital from growth initiatives. As part of the acquisition, Acker became executive vice president and CFO of Braniff.

Troy Post hired Harding Lawrence, executive vice president of Continental Airlines, who was responsible for a 500% increase in sales at the Los Angeles-based carrier during his tenure, as the new president of Braniff International. Lawrence was determined to give Braniff a glossy, modern, and attention-getting image. Over the next 15 years, his expansion into new markets – combined with ideas unorthodox for the airline industry – led Braniff to record financial and operating performance, expanding its earnings tenfold despite typical passenger load factors around 50%.

Mary Wells and "The End of the Plain Plane"

To begin the overhaul of Braniff's image, Lawrence hired Jack Tinker and Partners, who assigned advertising executive Mary Wells – later Mary Wells Lawrence after her November 1967 marriage to Harding Lawrence in Paris – as account leader. First on the agenda was to overhaul Braniff's public image — including the 1959 Red and Blue El Dorado Super Jet livery, which Wells saw as "staid". New Mexico architect Alexander Girard, Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci, and shoe designer Beth Levine were hired, and with this new talent, Braniff began the "End of the Plain Plane" campaign.

At Girard's recommendation, the old livery was dropped in favor of a single color on each plane, selected from a palette of rich and mid-century styled hues such as "Lemon Yellow" and "Periwinkle Blue Lavender", dubbed the Alexander Girard Solid Color Scheme. He favored a small "BI" logo and small titles and originally wanted each aircraft painted in a solid light brown color. However, Braniff engineering and Braniff's advertising department modified Girard's single color idea, enlarged the "BI" logo, and added white wings and tails. This, ironically, was based on the 1930s Braniff Lockheed Vega color schemes, which also carried colorful paint with white wings and tails. The new fleet carried such colors as beige, ochre, orange, turquoise, baby blue, medium blue, lemon yellow, and lavender/periwinkle blue. Lavender was dropped after a month, due to the similarity in coloration to the witch moth (Ascalapha odorata), a sign of bad luck in Mexican mythology.

August 22, 1954 – Braniff Flight 152 crashed 16 mi south of Mason City, Iowa, after encountering windshear in a thunderstorm, killing 12 of 19 on board. The aircraft was a Douglas C-47, registration N61451.

July 17, 1955 – Braniff Flight 560 crashed at Chicago–Midway Airport after the pilot became disoriented during the approach, killing 22 of 43 on board. The aircraft was a Convair CV-340-22, registration N3422.

March 25, 1958 – Braniff Flight 971 crashed near Miami International Airport while attempting to return to the airport after the number-three engine caught fire, killing nine of 15 passengers; all five crew survived. The pilot had become preoccupied with the engine fire and failed to maintain altitude. The aircraft was a Douglas DC-7C, registration N5904.

September 29, 1959 – Braniff Flight 542 crashed in Buffalo, Texas, while en route from Houston to Dallas, and the crash resulted in the deaths of 29 passengers and five crew members. The plane, registration number N9705C, was an 11-day-old Lockheed L-188 Electra. The Civil Aeronautics Board blamed the crash on metal fatigue due to the "whirl-mode" propeller theory. In 2022, Braniff Airways sponsored a Texas State Historical Marker, which was placed at the accident site in Buffalo, Texas.

October 19, 1959 – A Boeing 707 crashed near Arlington, Washington. The new jet aircraft, registered as N7071, was due for delivery to Braniff the next day and was already wearing Braniff livery. The aircraft was on an orientation flight with Boeing and Braniff personnel. A Boeing pilot initiated a series of Dutch rolls, with a Braniff pilot performing recoveries. Rolls exceeded maximum bank angle restrictions, resulting in a loss of control. The aircraft recovered, but three engines were torn off and the 707 crashed while attempting an emergency landing northeast of Arlington. The four crew members in the cockpit were killed, while four observers located in the tail survived.

September 14, 1960 – An airline maintenance inspector lost control of a Braniff International Airways Douglas DC-7C during a taxi test and crashed into the Braniff Operations and Maintenance Base hangar at high speed. The inspector died and five of the six mechanics aboard were injured. The aircraft brakes were set to bypass mode and braking action was not available when it was needed.

November 14, 1961 – A Braniff DC-7C (N5905) was written off following a ground fire caused by a lit cigar from a cleaning crew member at Dallas Love Field.

August 6, 1966 – Braniff Flight 250 crashed near Falls City, Nebraska, en route from Kansas City to Omaha after encountering severe thunderstorms in flight. Thirty-eight passengers and four crew members were killed in the crash. The plane was a BAC One-Eleven 203, registration N1553.

May 3, 1968 – Braniff Flight 352 crashed in Dawson, Texas, while en route to Dallas from Houston, killing 80 passengers and five crew members. The plane was a Lockheed Electra II, registration N9707C. The crash was caused by the pilot's decision to enter an area of severe thunderstorms, and the aircraft suffered stresses beyond its design limits and broke apart. In 2023, Braniff Airways Foundation sponsored a Texas State Historical Marker, was placed at the accident site in Dawson, Texas.

July 2, 1971 – Braniff Flight 14, a Boeing 707 flying from Acapulco to New York City with 102 passengers and a crew of eight was hijacked on approach to a refueling stop in San Antonio, Texas. After a refueling stop in Monterrey, the hijackers released flight attendants Jeanette Eatman Crepps, Iris Kay Williams, and Anita Bankert Mayer and all of the passengers. The remaining crew of Captain Dale Bessant, Bill Wallace, Phillip Wray, and flight attendants Ernestina Garcia and Margaret Susan Harris flew on to Lima. The hijackers, a U.S. Navy deserter named Robert Jackson and his female Guatemalan companion, demanded and received ransom of $100,000 and wanted to go to Algeria. The Bessant crew was released, one by one, and replaced by a volunteer crew of Captain Al Schroeder, Bill Mizell, Bob Williams, and Navigator Ken McWhorter. Two Lima-based employees, Delia Arizola and Clorinda Ortoneda, volunteered to board the flight. Arizola had been retired six months, but still offered her services. The 707 left for Rio and planned to refuel, but the hijackers forced them on to Buenos Aires. The long flight and fatigue took its toll and the hijackers gave up. The incident was a record for long-distance hijacking, over 7,500 miles (12,100 km), and lasted 43 hours.

January 12, 1972 – Braniff Flight 38, a Boeing 727, was hijacked as it departed Houston bound for Dallas. The lone armed hijacker, Billy Gene Hurst Jr., allowed all 94 passengers to deplane after landing at Dallas Love Field, but continued to hold the seven crew members hostage, demanding to fly to South America and asking for US$2 million, parachutes, and jungle survival gear, among other items. After a six-hour standoff, the entire crew secretly fled while Hurst was distracted examining the contents of a package delivered by Dallas police. Police officers stormed the craft shortly afterwards and arrested Hurst without serious incident.

August 23, 1977 — A package of cocaine for American country music singer Waylon Jennings, was delivered on Braniff Flight 119. It was intercepted by the Drug Enforcement Administration prior to its departure from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Jennings and his associates were briefly arrested, but ultimately never faced serious jail time besides Mark Rothbaum who served an 18-month sentence for the incident.

November 9, 1979 – A Braniff Boeing 747 was ordered by Philippine authorities to land at Manila International Airport on suspicion of violating Philippine airspace. The aircraft was held up in Manila for approximately three hours.