Boeing 727-200
Western Airlines began on 13 July 1925 as Western Air Express - WAE - operating mail services with a single Douglas M-2 biplane. The airline had been awarded the Salt-Lake City to Los Angeles segment of the trans-continental US Air Mail Route on 7 October 1925. WAE flew the route from April 1926 and apart from carrying mail it flew with passengers. This was so successful that within a month of the new route opening WAE made US history when it started America's first scheduled and sustained passenger service. In 1928 WAE acquired control of the Fokker Aircraft Company. The US Postmaster General forced a merger between two of the airlines flying his mail routes, WAE and TAT - Transcontinental Air Transport - and the two airlines formed a new airline called Transcontinental & Western Air - T.W.A. For a time after this Western Air Express operated under the name General Airlines. In August 1931 WAE purchased two routes owned by Mid-Contenental Air Express. These were both fromPueblo in Colorado to El Paso and to Fort Worth which linked with the TWA trans-continental route from New York to Los Angeles. In 1937 the airline bought out National Park Airways giving WAE a route from Great Falls, Montana to Salt Lake City.
Boeing 707-320C
On 11 March 1941 WAE was renamed Western Airlines. Douglas DC-3s were in use prior to the war but were taken over during the war with Western flying the difficult routes between Great Falls and Edmonton to points in Alaska on behalf of the US Government. Western purchased Inland Air Lines giving Western a circuitous route to Minneapolis. Douglas DC-4s were introduced during this war period. In 1943 Western came into competition with T.W.A. on a route from Los Angeles and San Francisco and by 1946 Western was flying twelve non-stop flights a day on this route. A new coach-class Seattle-Los Angeles route in competition with United Air Lines. During the post-war years Western introduced the Lockheed L-749a Constellation which was still flying ten years after the first jets. By 1951 Douglas DC-6B airliners were introduced on the West Coast routes. 1959 saw the introduction of turboprop Lockheed Electras on the Seattle to Los Angeles route. 1961 saw the introduction of a fleet of 13 Boeing 720Bs which were introduced in the current livery of the time. They would remain in service into the 1970s. 1967 the airline merged with PNA - Pacific Northern Airlines who flew routes throughout Alaska with a fleet of Constellations and Boeing 720B jets. Both the jets and the routes were incorporated into Western Airlines. In 1968 Boeing 707-320C jets were purchased as Western moved toward an all-jet fleet ideal. 1968 also saw the purchase of a fleet of Boeing 737-200s. These 737s would take over from the fleet of turboprop Electras. Boeing 727-200 jets were also ordered in 1968. A fleet of Douglas DC10-10s were delivered from April 1973 and named 'Spaceships' by Western. Toward the end of the- 1970s an international service to London-Gatwick was introduced using Douglas DC10-10s. During the 1980s Western Airlines experimented with a new all-silver livery. This allowed the aircraft to fly with less paint and therefore more cheaply.
