This is all very well; but why all this interest? I have spent time pondering this matter and, right or wrong, this is the conclusion I have reached: air travel and everything connected to aviation used to have an aura of romanticism around it once upon a time. Pilots used to be the knights of the skies, and cabin attendants wingless angels. People employed in aviation, no matter what their duties, would be the heroes of their families and of their neighborhoods. As with many other novelties which enjoy favor at the beginning, aviation and air travel also became part of life’s routine.

"The way it was and the way it is", which I have begun to write as a series for the next few issues of NewsPORT, will appear in the "trends in aviation" section for a while, because I think it is important to understand the past within the context of a study of trends. So I shall not introduce the subject by repeating what everyone knows by heart, that “Orville and Wilbur Wright flew for the first time at Kitty Hawk," which by the way is not precisely correct. Instead, I shall research and study the origins of some terms we use on a daily basis, the most popular planes for air travel, the development of airports, and the past, present and future of handling and air traffic control (ATC). I shall then try to explain all this to those who are curious about the subject.

If you have fastened your seat belts, come on, let us press on the start button of our time machine.

FORD TRI-MOTOR

Here is a page from the past of air travel. The Ford Tri-Motor, which earned a place of honor within the history of civilian aviation. Nowadays, however, it has been forgotten, But it lives on as proof that an international company manufacturing cars once upon a time also manufactured an airplane that carried our grandfathers and grandmothers.

Even if he was not like that personally, Henry Ford is an example of the greedy capitalists of the early 20th century who formed monopolies. Many would consider it surprising that Ford added a rubber plantation in the Brazilian Amazon, which ended as a terrible disaster with losses of many millions, to his manufacturing activities that included the famous Ford Model T car. So it would perhaps also be surprising had he not raised his sights to the skies.

True enough, one day in 1925, Henry Ford bought the Stout Metal Airplane Company--with all its designs--from William B. Stout. He studied Stout's models inspired from the German Junkers planes, and gave instructions to proceed with the manufacture of a tri-motor. The Ford Motor Company, which was famous for its engine production, including for third party manufacturers of cars, tractors, lorries and even boats, on this occasion chose to buy from another company; and so it was that it bought air cooled radial engines from the Wright company, which at that time was number one as far as plane engine manufacturing was concerned. Since at that time people did not have much knowledge about aerodynamics, a trial and error approach was employed, and the factory ended up producing two models. Even though these airplanes did not have a very futuristic design for their time, they were manufactured with techniques that could be considered modern for the ’20's.

* A Tin Goose (as the Ford Tri-Motor was jokingly nicknamed) is getting ready for its trip and the baggage, cargo and post is being loaded on. yapılıyor
* A Boeing 727, which by now is considered small and has disappeared from the passenger transport sector, has an 88 ton take-off weight, a capacity for 170 passengers and 6 tons of cargo,. One is seen here near a Ford Tri-Motor.

Ford began bragging everywhere, "I have produced the safest airplane in the world." Its corrugated aluminum body was certainly sturdier than the other airplanes of its time, which were built of wooden frames covered with banana oil soaked canvas. However, this airplane had been generated on the drawing table of designers unaware of aerodynamics, so this was a disaster as far as air friction was concerned. The corrugated aluminum created so much air friction that the airplane could fly only at between 20 to 30% lower than its potential performance. It was because of this poor performance that it was nicknamed the "Tin Goose."

Some interesting and extraordinary characteristics of its first models also continued to exist in later versions provided with Pratt & Whitney engines. Some monitoring meters like the ones for engine heat and others were set on the engines, with the result that the pilots had to extend their necks out of the windows at a certain frequency to see the situation. This was feasible in the airplanes of those days, which had speeds of 250-300 km. and which could not fly above altitudes of 1.500-2.000 metres. Its landing gear was fixed, and its brakes, and its wing and rudder panes were controlled with wire systems that required physical strength.

The Transcontinental Air Transport company, which was later to be bought by TWA, was the first to use this plane commercially when in 1929 it flew at full capacity with 12 passengers from San Diego in California to New York. 199 Ford Tri-Motors in its C3, C3A, C4, C4A and C9 versions and13 military cargo planes were manufactured, and the 199 Ford Tri-Motors produced between 1926 and 1933 were used by around a 100 airlines all over the world.

For certain, its biggest customer was Juan Trippe's Pan American Airway System or Pan Am as it was commonly known.

However, competitors appeared, and once much bigger and more successful airplanes began flying, the Ford Tri-Motor's 1933 model became its last.

The Ford Tri-Motor managed to be in the limelight thanks to Henry Ford's media-wise personality, and the importance he attributed to advertising. Many famous aviators, with Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart at the forefront, flew in the cockpit of the Ford Tri-Motor, where they posed for photographs. The American polar explorer, Admiral Richard Byrd, flew over the South Pole on a Ford Tri-Motor. Franklin Delano Roosevelt flew over long distances on a Ford Tri-Motor. In a way it could be said that the Ford Tri-Motor was the “First Air Force One.”
This is not all that there is; the Ford Tri-Motor took part in the first ever tanker airplane tests and having successfully managed to refuel a Lockheed Electra it came back in 1937, the first tanker plane to have carried out aerial refuelling. However, the test having taken too long, its own fuel was exhausted and it crashed.