Pacific Air Lines
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| Founded | 1941 | ||||||
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| Commenced operations | December 2, 1946 (renamed Pacific Air Lines, March 6, 1958) |
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| Ceased operations | 1968 (merged with Bonanza Air Lines and West Coast Airlines to form Air West) | ||||||
| Hubs | San Francisco International Airport | ||||||
| Fleet size | 40 | ||||||
| Headquarters | San Francisco International Airport | ||||||
| Key people | John Howard Connelly Leland Hayward |
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Pacific Air Lines was a regional airline (then called a "local service" air carrier as defined by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board) on the West Coast of the United States which began scheduled passenger operations in the mid 1940s under the name Southwest Airways. The company was essentially a feeder airline, primarily linking smaller communities in California with larger cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. Flights were also operated to Portland, Oregon, and eventually reached Las Vegas and Reno in Nevada.
Founded largely with money from investors from the Hollywood motion picture industry, the airline was noted for innovative safety practices and cost-saving procedures. The name Pacific Air Lines passed into history in 1968 in a merger with Bonanza Air Lines and West Coast Airlines, forming Air West, which then became Hughes Airwest.
In early 1941, Air Service veteran John Howard "Jack" Connelly and noted Hollywood agent/producer Leland Hayward formed a business partnership that five years later evolved into a scheduled commercial airline. Neither man was a stranger to aviation; Connelly was also a former test pilot, airplane salesman, Civil Aeronautics Administration instructor pilot, and inspector for the 1930s-era Soviet Union. Hayward was an active private pilot and was on the board of directors of Transcontinental and Western Airlines (TWA). The two men enlisted the support of commercial pilot and photographer John Swope to oversee the training of aviation cadets. Together, they founded a maintenance depot for overhauling training aircraft, a wartime air cargo line, and a military pilot training complex consisting of Thunderbird Field No. 1, Thunderbird Field No. 2, and Falcon Field in Arizona. By the end of World War II, Southwest Airways was the largest training contractor in the United States, and trained more than 20,000 pilots from over 24 countries.
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