Grand Central Airport (United States) - Pioneering People at GCAT

Pioneering People At GCAT

Many famous pioneers of aviation made their home and their mark at GCAT, as pilots, designers, mechanics, teachers, salesmen, and airplane/power-plant builders, often serving in some combination.

The following names are especially remembered:

• Charles Lindbergh, who piloted the nation's first regularly scheduled coast to coast flight from Grand Central's runway as organizer of Transcontinental Air Transport which came to be TWA.
• Amelia Earhart used the airport and bought her first plane there.
• Wiley Post used the airport.
• Laura Ingalls became the first woman to fly solo across the country when she landed at Glendale in 1930.
• Albert Forsythe and Charles Anderson were the first African American pilots who made the transcontinental flight, completed at Glendale in 1933. Their achievement paved the way for the black Tuskegee Airmen who fought in World War II.
• Thomas Benton Slate built an all-metal dirigible and hangar in 1925. It was 212 ft (65 m). long, and supposedly fireproof. He named it "City of Glendale", and it left the ground briefly in 1929, popped some rivets, and crashed.
• Howard Hughes built his record-setting H-1 Racer in a small building at 911 Air Way in 1935. (The building burned to the ground in the late 1990s). This was the beginning of the Hughes Aircraft Company.
• Jack Northrop started his 'Avion Aviation' company on the field in 1927, where he built multi-cellular metal structures.
• William Boeing bought the business from Northrop, and moved it to Burbank's United Airport (now Bob Hope Airport).
• W. B. (Bert) Kinner built Amelia Earhart’s first plane, the Kinner Airster. He was the inventor of the compound folding wing.
• Major C. C. Moseley established overhaul facilities there, and operated a flight academy whose pilot and mechanic graduates traveled to Europe as the all volunteer Eagle Squadron who flew against Hitler at the Battle of Britain before the country entered the war.

In addition, airlines originating at GCA included TWA, Varney, Western, and Pickwick Airlines (1928–30).