EAA AVIATION CENTER, OSHKOSH, Wisconsin — Two iconic aircraft types from the Golden Age of Aviation, Fairchild and Travel Air, will celebrate their centennial years during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025.
The 72nd annual Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in convention will be held July 21-27, 2025, at Wittman Regional Airport (KOSH) in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
The airplanes will have a place of honor on the AirVenture flightline, with additional programs and activities held in conjunction with the Fairchild and Travel Air type clubs, according to EAA officials. All owners of Fairchild and Travel Air aircraft are invited to be part of the centennial activities.
“Each of these aircraft companies were founded in 1925, but took very different paths through their histories,” said Rick Larsen, EAA’s vice president of communities and member programs, who coordinates AirVenture features and attractions. “Each of these aircraft types made unique contributions to the world of flight, especially the momentous era from 1920 until 1940.”
Fairchild Aircraft was founded in 1925 as a builder of aircraft stable enough for aerial photography and mapping. While the company created a significant number of civilian passenger airplanes in its first 15 years, it was during World War II that the company turned to military aircraft production, especially trainers and transports.
It continued that focus through acquisitions of Hiller Aircraft and Republic Aircraft in the 1960s. Its final major production aircraft was the A-10 Thunderbolt II, also known as the Warthog, from 1972 through 1984.
The EAA Aviation Museum currently has the oldest Fairchild aircraft in existence, a 1927 FC-2W model. It is in early American Airlines markings as it served as an early carrier after flying for Interstate Airlines.
The Travel Air Manufacturing Company’s short history was a partnership of three famous names in aviation history: Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna, and Lloyd Stearman of Wichita, Kansas. The three men were part of the Swallow Aircraft Company but in 1925 struck out on their own to create biplanes in a 30-by-30-foot space in downtown Wichita.
After some early success, the partnership separated with Stearman and then Cessna moving to their own businesses. The company was eventually absorbed into the Curtiss-Wright Corporation in 1929 and ended production in 1931 during the Great Depression.
EAA continues the legacy of the company with its Travel Air 4000, which is one of the oldest aircraft in the world offering passenger flights with its seasonal operations at the EAA Aviation Museum’s Pioneer Airport, association officials noted.
For more information: EAA.org
There’s a notable error, regarding Travel Air’s co-founders,
Clyde Cessna, Lloyd Stearman and Walter Beech:
“The three men were part of the Swallow Aircraft Company”
Not so. Cessna wasn’t part of Swallow (though he owned a Swallow). Beech & Stearman left Swallow after a design disagreement with Swallow’s curmudgeon founder-funder-boss, oilman Jake Moellendick.
In 1919-1920, Moellendick had funded and co-founded Matty Laird’s “Laird Aircraft,” America’s first successful “commercial” airplane manufacturer, in Wichita — but ran off Laird’s buddy Buck Weaver (who co-founded WACO in Ohio), and, by 1923, Laird, himself, returned to Chicago, and took his company name with him.
Jake re-named the Wichita operation “Swallow” for the name of the plane they had produced together. Laird/Swallow employees Beech & Stearman became Swallow’s Gen.Mgr./Chief Salesman and Chief Engineer, respectively.
By the end of 1924, Beech & Stearman thought it was time to switch from wood frames to metal frames (something already happening in the industry). Stubborn Jake Moellendick rejected the idea, and told them if they didn’t like it, to take a hike. They did (along with shop foreman Bill Snook).
They found funding and partnership from local pre-WWI barnstormer and early Wichita plane-maker Clyde Cessna — who, when World War I shut down exhibition flying, had returned to farm life, making a small fortune in agriculture during the war. To start Travel Air, Clyde Cessna chipped in $25,000 (about $450,000 in today’s money) — as did leading Wichita businessman Walt Innes, Jr., who was Travel Air’s initial president (Cessna was next). Walter Beech was sales manager and Lloyd Stearman the engineer.
It was a tempestuous triangle of aviation greats, each with his own idea of how to build airplanes. It took their office manager, Olive Ann Mellor, to keep them working towards the common goal of a sound business — while many other such aviation entrepreneurs of the era failed for lack of sound business management. (She would later marry Beech, and help lead his namesake company to fame and fortune, even long after Walter’s death, becoming widely known as “The First Lady of Aviation”: Olive Ann Beech.)
By 1928, Travel Air, now headed by Walter Beech, was the most prolific producer of airplanes in America. It’s production, combined with Swallow, and the spin-off companies of Cessna and Stearman, produced over 900 aircraft in 1928, the most of any U.S. city — earning Wichita the semi-official title “Air Capital City” (from the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce, the American plane-makers’ association). Wichita never surrendered the title, building over a quarter-million aircraft in the years since.
~ Richard Harris, harris1.net/hold/av
former Chair, Wichita Aviation Centennial
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