PIEDMONT AIRLINES DC3 - 1948

PIEDMONT AIRLINES 1948 OPERATIONS

DC3 POSTCARD

DC3 Photo capture from a publicity leaflet by Piedmont Airlines

A few words about the company


Please take some minutes and think that Piedmont could have been named Camel city Flying Services.Yes this the name of the company that Thomas H. Davis acquired from cigarette mogul heir Dick Reynolds. The company was a training school for pilots during WW2 and a MRO. As the war was coming to an end and the need for pilots started diminishing and hence the steady flow of money. Davis decided to establish an airline in the Piedmont region.In French Piedmont means "at the foot of the mountain", and this is the region that stretches from the Atlantic ocean to the Appalachian and Great Smokies mountains,Thomas H. Davis applied to the CAB for license in 1944and waited .....
He did not take into account the bureaucratic red tape that was the CAB, and after 3 years in April 1947 the CAB awarded Piedmont to operate route 87 between the Ohio River Valley and the tidewater region. This award created an uproar at Eastern Airlines that was eyeing suspiciously the new entrant and State Airlines that was competing for the same license. However in its 2nd ruling the CAB in December 1947 ruled in favour of Piedmont . From that date things went very quickly, the company was incorporated January 1948 and was based in Winston-Salem. Davis bought 3 DC3,  2 from Colonial Airlines ( N42V "Appalachian Pacemaker", N43V ("Kanawha River Pacemaker") and 1 from Northeast (N44V "Commonwealth Peacemaker") and hired mid level managers from competitor Eastern Airlines.

It was on a cold February 20 1948 that Piedmont took off for its first flight ever as route 41 between Wilmington North Carolina to Cincinnati with 5 intermediate stops, stretching over a distance of 1381 km.See below the route map

The company will soon expand to include all cities awarded by the CAB. Specifically, on Mar 6 1948 services will be added to  to Goldsboro, Louisville, Greensboro, New Bern and Raleigh-Durham, and Winston-Salem, followed on April 16 by Danville and Roanoke , May 5 Morehead-Beaufort,and  on May 14 Lynchburg, Norfolk Richmond and Charleston. The Timetable dated July 1, 1948 

shows us the following routings All routes are operated daily with 24-seat DC3 over the following routes :

ROUTE 11 Wilmington-Southern Pines-Charlotte-Asheville-Tri Cities-Lexington-Cincinnati 
ROUTE 15 Wilmington-Southern Pines-Charlotte-Asheville-Tri Cities-Lexington-Louisville 

 
ROUTE 21 Morehead City-New Bern-Goldsboro-Raleigh-Durham-Greensboro-Winston-Salem-Tri Cities-Lexington-Cincinnati 

ROUTE 31 Norfolk-Richmond-Lynchburg-Roanoke-Charleston-Cincinnati 
ROUTE 37 Norfolk-Richmond-Lynchburg-Roanoke 

ROUTE 41 Wilmington-Raleigh-Durham-Greensboro-Danville-Roanoke-Charleston-Cincinnati 

The DC3 network covered  24 cities over a length of 2902 km  with an average sector length of 132 km

Piedmont will operate from 1948 to 1963 25 DC3. The last flight by DC3 will occur in February 1963 when "Great Smokies pacemaker will land for the last time . Starting in 1958 ,the company began to replace its DC3 with American built Fokker F27 and the remaining fleet will be replaced by 40-seater Martin 404.
By February 1963, the network of the company expanded to include : Fayetteville (1949), Newport News (1949) ,Myrtle Beach (1952 round the year),Beckley (1952), Hickory (1952), Knoxville (1952), Kinston (1952) ,Huntington (1952), London-Corbin (1953),Bluefield-Princeton (1954), Columbus (1955),Parkesburg (1955),Charlottesville (1955), Washington (DCA,1955) , Staunton-Waynesboro (1960),Frankfort (1960),Elizabeth City (1961),Rocky Mount-Wilson (1961), Augusta (1962), Columbia (1962),Baltimore (1962),Atlanta )1962),Pulaski (1962),Florence (1962).