Tony Jannus - First Scheduled Airline Flight

First Scheduled Airline Flight

Prior to 1914, travel from Tampa, Florida, to St. Petersburg, located on a then-isolated peninsula, required a slow steamboat trip across Tampa Bay or a circuitous, three-hour journey by railroad. A bumpy automobile or horse and buggy ride took several hours over primitive, unpaved roads. The airplane at the time was a rare novelty, lacking any practical application. Impressed by the record-setting overwater flight made by Jannus in 1912, Florida businessman Percival Fansler approached some St. Petersburg businessmen the next year with a proposal to use Benoist flying boats for "a real commercial line" over open water between the two cities.. Convinced by Fansler's plan, several St. Petersburg community leaders, led by L. A. Whitney of the local chamber of commerce and Noel Mitchell, agreed to provide financial support for the creation of an airline service to connect the two cities. A 90-day contract with Benoist was signed on December 17, 1913 (the 10th anniversary of Wilbur and Orville Wright's historic first airplane flight), to provide airplanes and crew for two daily round trips across Tampa Bay, dubbed the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line — the world's first scheduled airline.

Fansler told the St. Petersburg Times: "The St. Petersburg waterfront is an ideal place for starting and landing as the trip to and from Tampa will be one of the most beautiful in the country. Skimming a few feet above the surface of the water... with the purr of a 75 h.p. engine and the whirring of a propeller turning several hundred times a minute, the rush of the cool salt air and the shimmering sunlight on Tampa Bay — no trip could be more enjoyable.".

Departing from a location on January 1, 1914, near the downtown St. Petersburg Municipal Pier on Second Avenue North, Jannus piloted the twenty-three minute inaugural flight of the pioneer airline's Benoist XIV flying boat biplane. A crowd of 3,000 gathered at the pier to watch the history-making takeoff at 10 a.m. and were told by Fansler that "What was impossible yesterday is an accomplishment today, while tomorrow heralds the unbelieveable". Abram C. Pheil, former mayor of St. Petersburg, won an auction for the first ticket with a winning bid of $400 and was a passenger on the inaugural flight . It was the first time a ticket was sold to the general public for point-to-point scheduled air travel. The Benoist reportedly reached a maximum speed of 75 miles per hour (121 km/h) during the flight, according to a United Press account. Other reports indicate that Jannus flew over the Bay at an altitude of less than 50 feet (15 m). Upon the airboat's arrival in Tampa, the Tampa Tribune reported, "a crowd of two thousand was waiting...Messrs. Jannus and Pheil bowed and smiled". Thereafter, flights departed St. Petersburg daily except Sundays at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.. Return flights left Tampa at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m.