South America
By the late 1920s, barnstorming wasn't a viable way to make a living. Pan Am teamed up with W. R. Grace and Company to bid for an airmail contract in South America. The new airline, Pan American-Grace Airways (Panagra) flew weekly airmail from the US to Lima, Peru via the Canal Zone. A Ford Trimotor was purchased and Reeve trained with the Ford Motor Company on these aircraft, delivering the first to Lima in August 1929. Panagra offered Reeve the chance to fly Airmail Route 9 from Lima to Santiago, Chile, at this time the longest aviation route in the world at 1,900 miles (3,100 km). In 1930 the route was extended to Montevideo, Uruguay.It was during this time that Reeve learned about bush flying, developing techniques to avoid coastal fog which would later serve him in Alaska and mountain flying skills. He established a speed record between Santiago and Lima, covering the 1,900 miles in 20 hours. In January 1932, he crashed a Lockheed Vega of Panagra at Santiago, and quit before he was fired.
Read more about this topic: Robert Campbell Reeve
Famous quotes containing the words south america, south and/or america:
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“In America the cohesion was a matter of choice and will. But in Europe it was organic.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)