Travel Air

The Travel Air Manufacturing Company was an aircraft manufacturer established in Wichita, Kansas, United States in January 1925 by Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech, and Lloyd Stearman.

The company initially built a series of sporting and training open-cockpit biplanes, including the Model A, Model B, Model BH, and Model BW. (renumbered so that A = 1000, B = 2000, BH = 3000, BW = 4000). Other types included the 5000 and 6000 high wing cabin monoplanes and the CW / 7000 mailplane.

The A differed in some minor details such as lacking the overhanging Fokker style ailerons that gave the rest of the series the nickname Wichita Fokker (not present on all of the later models though), while the B, BH and BW differed only in the engine installed - the A and B had a Curtiss OX-5, the BH had a Hispano Suiza V-8, the BW had a Wright radial (of various types) though other radials would be installed later (especially after it became the 4000). Aside from the Wichita Fokkers seen in such movies as Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels, likely the most famous of the open cockpit biplanes was N434N, a D4D (the ultimate derivative of the BW) painted in Pepsi colors for airshow and skywriting use which survives in the National Air & Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy annex. A second, backup D4D, N434P, used by Pepsi in later years to supplement and fill-in for the original aircraft, is housed in the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California. N434P is the aircraft pictured at right.

The Travel Air 5000 was a Clyde Cessna designed aircraft ordered in small numbers for National Air Transport. Two were custom-built long-range endurance aircraft similar in concept to Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. Woolaroc, flown by Art Gobel won the disastrous Dole Air Race from Oakland, California to Hawaii in which the majority of contestants disappeared at sea or otherwise died attempting the crossing.

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