OUR AIRCRAFT
The Airliners of Yesterday
ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME TODAY
Couples, friends, families – these tours inspire awe from all ages. We have guests that want to get back on a DC-3 because they were a passenger when the planes were still used for commercial flights, and we have customers who are taking their very first flight!
FIRST CLASS SERVICE
With only 18 passenger seats, everyone gets a view, especially since we fly lower than other commercial airliners! And when you can pull yourself away from the magical landscapes, our stewardesses in 1940s period authentic uniforms will offer you an elegant flute of champagne to toast the luxury of real leg room. Also, unlike most tour planes, we have bathrooms, a truly comfortable and deluxe experience.
VINTAGE CHARM
Our stewardesses are not the only ones in traditional aviation uniforms of the 1940s, our pilots can tip their classic captain’s hats to you as well. Also, our in-plane décor is restored to true golden era commercial DC-3 splendor.
DC-3 History
The Douglas DC-3, which made air travel popular and airline profits possible, is universally recognized as the greatest airplane of its time. Some would argue that it is the greatest of all time.
The Douglas Aircraft Company built the “Douglas Commercial 3” in response to a request from American Airlines CEO, C. R. Smith, for a sleeper aircraft for long-distance flights based on the DC-2. The DC-3 did not disappoint, with its cabin that was two feet wider and accommodated 14-16 sleeper berths or 21 passenger seats.
This new airliner took to the sky for the first time in 1935 on December 17th. The reliability, comfort, and performance of these DC-3s made airlines like American, Delta, United, Pan Am, and TWA line up to order entire fleets. This airplane cemented flying as the preferred method for long-distance travel.
The last civilian DC-3s were built in early 1943, as planes were then needed for WWII. The DC-3s for the military (C-47s, or Navy R4Ds) were modified to have a reinforced floor, cargo door, a shortened tail cone, and a hoist attachment. President Dwight D. Eisenhower even claimed C-47s were one of the four most important things to win the war!
During WWII Douglas produced over 10,000 DC-3s/C-47s, most built by women. Working together in an amazing show of coordination these “Rosies” churned out one airplane every 34 minutes, where individually they took 3.5 days to build!
After WWII, there were many C-47s available for the airline industry, but they had largely moved on to faster and larger DC-4s and DC-6s for main routes. However, some smaller airlines did pick up the DC-3s sold off by the larger airlines and C-47s were snapped up for cargo freighters.
The DC-3/C-47 has two Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp 14-cylinder radial engines that produce 1200 hp each. This thrust is enough to lift over 20 passengers and their baggage or over 6,000 pounds of just cargo. This remarkable aircraft can fly about 1,600 miles, cruise at 160-180 mph, land in less than 3,000 feet, then take off in less than 1,000 feet on grass and dirt runways too!
C-47s were again used by the military in the Vietnam war, some as modified left-side only gunships, some with psychological warfare loudspeakers used to also drop propaganda leaflets, and they were still used as good-ole cargo haulers. But by the 1960s the efficiency of the turboprop airliners wrestled all but a few of the last of the commercial regional flights away from DC-3s.
DC-3s/C-47s have lived many lives: as air tankers fighting forest fires, VIP and executive transports, drug cartel weapons and drug haulers, electronic intelligence gatherers, float planes, air ambulances, specialty sized cargo carriers, and Antarctic research aircraft. Most famously, C-47s were one of the aircraft tasked with supplying food to Berlin during the Berlin Airlift.
While the last C-47s were retired from official military service in 2008, in 2017 the Air Force contracted with a private company to use their DC-3 to test senor development pods for MQ-9 Reaper drones. This plane from the past is helping to improve the next generation of unmanned aerial vehicles.
Total production of DC-3s was over 16,000, with the DC-3 Appreciation Society estimating 172 DC-3s of all variants still flying on a regular basis today. Over 85 years of flight, this iconic aircraft has changed the world, and continues to inspire appreciation and awe all over the globe.
Our Aircraft
N763A
A LEGENDARY WAY TO FLY
This aircraft, N763A, was one of 219 military C-53s (equivalent to a DC-3A) built by Douglas Aircraft at the Santa Monica plant for WWII. Completed on March 11, 1942 she was transferred from United States Army Air Forces possession to the Navy. After being decommissioned from military service she was snapped up by Continental Airlines in the spring of 1947 and converted for use as a commercial airliner. Southern Airways bought her in 1949 for Southeastern U.S. and Central American routes, where she flew passengers until being sold to a Texas business man in 1966.
She has seen the U.S. and Central America as a commercial passenger plane, was bought and sold by a handful of private owners, was overhauled in classic 1950s Ozark Air Lines colors for their 35th anniversary open house in 1985, and made an appearance in many airshows; before settling down as someone’s personal plane in Florida. In 2016, after this semi-retirement, we rescued N763A out of Florida (she would have been destroyed by a hurricane a year later) and flew her all the way to her new home in Alaska.
This aircraft is on the registry of historic places of Illinois and is truly a time capsule. While N763A has carried a lot of people and cargo around the world, probably her most famous cargo was Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco, who once flew in this very aircraft.
N400MF
EXPERIENCE HISTORY IN ACTION
Built in 1944, N400MF was commissioned to the United States Army Air Forces, but was transferred to the Navy as a R4D-6. After over a decade of military service she was purchased by North Central Airlines in 1956, where she flew passengers on commercial flights for many years.
In 1984 N400MF was called to a new line of work, when she was acquired by Missionary Fights and Services. Over the next 30 years, she flew all over the Caribbean for relief missions in disaster and poverty-stricken areas. Even though she had more to give, she eventually was replaced by more modern turbine equipment that phased out these older piston powered aircraft and Kingdom Air Corps, another missionary service, gave her a new home in Palmer, Alaska. This versatile aircraft can haul passengers or cargo and will hopefully still be able to support relief missions when she is on her breaks from flying flightseeing tours.
One of the goals for this special aircraft, that has yet to be realized, is following the old land lease route that was used to ferry aircraft to Europe during WWII. Now that N400MF has come to reside with Golden Era Aviation, maybe she will get to make this voyage yet!
READY FOR AN ADVENTURE LIKE NO OTHER?
Fly Into The Past With Us