Southwest Airlines Salutes National Aviation Day

Aug. 19, 2010
August 19 is National Aviation Day; it was established in 1939 by President Franklin Roosevelt to promote interest in aviation.

Today August 19 is the 139th anniversary of Orville Wright's birthday. Celebrating the birthday of the first man to pilot a powered airplane would be reason enough to recognize the day, but wait there’s more. Today is also National Aviation Day. Lest you think this is some kind of modern day manufactured marketing holiday, it isn’t. It was established in 1939 by President Franklin Roosevelt to promote interest in aviation and to celebrate the world's first pilot.

Stop for a moment and consider the state of aviation in August of 1939. A few days after the first National Aviation Day, Hitler would invade Poland on September 1 throwing Europe into World War II. A year later in August 1940, the Nazis ruled mainland Europe, and the United Kingdom was all alone. Seventy years ago, a handful of courageous airmen of the Royal Air Force in their Hurricanes and Spitfires were holding on by a thread against the previously unstoppable German Luftwaffe. The tide would turn in September when the RAF gained the upper hand in the skies over England, and German invasion plans were thwarted. British Prime Minister Churchill wrote: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Stateside in 1939, the Douglas DC-3 was the workhorse of the airline industry. Airlines could finally make more carrying passengers than they could the mail. A transcontinental flight took 18 hours or so with multiple en route stops. Pan Am’s Clippers were flying between the World’s Fair on Treasure Island in San Francisco to Honolulu, Midway, Wake, Guam, and Manila. On the world’s longest overwater flight leg between California and Hawaii, more often than not the Clippers would reach their midway point without enough fuel to make Honolulu due to headwinds and would have to return to San Francisco to refuel and try again.

Aviation fueled the imagination back then, probably because anyone who flew onboard an airplane was considered somewhat of a risk taker or daredevil. Thankfully, aviation today is thousands of times safer than the inaugural year of National Aviation Day. But has the fascination with aviation died? After having attended AirVenture 2010 at Oshkosh this year, I think aviation, even commercial aviation, still holds our wonder and amazement. We had several thousand folks tour our aircraft on display. And after 56 years of my first flight in, what else, a DC-3, I still love to fly and watch aircraft.

To me there is nothing better than a window seat on a clear day. On my way to Oshkosh, I sat in a row with a father and his daughter. From what I could tell, neither had flown much. In fact, it may have been their first flight. I originally had the window seat, but I could see their fascination with watching the ground below, so once the seat belt light went off, we changed seats. It was a perfect day for flying, and feeling their excitement as they picked out towns as we flew over Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin was contagious. Our approach into Milwaukee took us out over Lake Michigan, and it was the perfect end for their first flight.

So take a moment today on National Aviation Day and have an aviation conversation with someone. If you know a young person who has an interest in airplanes, take time to talk to them. On your next flight, stop and look around at the wonder of modern aviation and think of Orville Wright strapped on a flimsy cloth-covered airplane.