| Airline: | Standard Airways |
| Iata: | FD(1)[1] |
| Icao: | FD(1) |
| Founded: | November 1945 |
| Commenced: | April 1946 |
| Fleet Size: | See Fleet below |
| Headquarters: | Seattle, Washington Miami, Florida United States |
| Founder: | Shields B. Craft Natalie Y. Gray |
| Notes: | (1) IATA, ICAO codes were the same until the 1980s |
Standard Airways operated intermittently from 1946 through 1969 as a small supplemental air carrier (earlier known as an irregular air carrier or a nonscheduled carrier) a type of US airline regulated by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), the now-defunct US federal agency that tightly regulated airlines from 1938 to 1978. From 1964 onward, a supplemental air carrier was a charter airline. Until 1964, such airlines were charter/scheduled hybrids and Standard Airways did operate some scheduled services. The airline went bankrupt in 1964 and did not operate again until 1966 with new investors. It converted to jets but then ceased flying again on August 1, 1969. Many attempts were made to restart the airline until the CAB finally revoked its certificate in 1975.
In November 1945, Shields B. Craft and Natalie Y. Gray created Standard Air Cargo as a 60/40 partnership between them. Both Craft and Gray were involved in military pilot training during World War II, Craft as a pilot instructor, Gray as a dispatcher. They bought a war surplus C-47 and started operations April 1946, engaging in everything from transporting lobsters, flying home returning veterans and transportation between the US mainland and Alaska. Stardard Air Cargo also ran a fixed base operation at San Diego Lindbergh Field, its headquarters. Standard did not consistently operate. For instance, in 1955, it had a single DC-3 that was on six-month lease to California Central Airlines. In 1955 it had a net worth of $145,000 (about $1.7 million in 2024 dollars).[2] By 1953 the carrier was using Standard Airways as a trade name.[3]
The airline spent much of 1959 and 1960 not operating, before resuming in the second half of 1960 after its certificate was reissued to reflect a change of status from partnership to a Maryland corporation.[4] Standard started "Pink Cloud" service from the west coast to Hawaii using the limited scheduled part of its supplemental authority, which allowed it to fly 10 flights per month in each direction on any given city pair. The lower half of the aircraft was painted pink,[5] the flight attendants were clad in pink, the champagne was pink and so forth.[6] During this era, the airline moved its operation to Burbank. The June 1962 fleet comprised a Douglas DC-6B, two Lockheed L-749A Constellations and an L-1049G Super Constellation, all owned other than one L-749. Standard received a temporary certificate as a supplemental air carrier in 1962 as required by new legislation, but only over the strong dissent of two of the five CAB Board members, who noted, among other things, the carrier's marginal financial state and the fact that new legislation would require the carrier be a pure charter carrier by 1965 yet it depended heavily on scheduled service. The majority noted the carrier's long history and the fact that its financial state, though precarious, was slowly improving and that it was, in fact, pursuing charters.[7]
In May 1963, Standard crashed its L-1049G at Manhattan Municipal Airport in Kansas (see Accidents) while flying for the military, which quickly suspended it from flying military charters. While all on board survived, the cause of the accident was alarming: systemic maintenance issues had resulted in poorly functioning components that permitted a propeller to spontaneously reverse pitch, reversing thrust. Standard stopped operating on 31 January 1964. It declared bankrupty in February. It emerged from bankruptcy in September an asset-less, employee-less husk.[8]
Standard started flying again on 13 February 1966, on the strength of a promised recapitalization by a company called Southern Pipeliners of Hialeah, Florida[9] which then failed to happen. The brief association gave Standard an identity as a Miami airline. Another group, organized by Frank B. Lynott, an executive of several airlines, the last being Alaska Airlines, stepped in by April, funding over $2 million in equity by June. The airline moved to Seattle. The Pike Corporation of America, run by Thomas P. Pike, specializing in deep sea oil drilling, held a 48% stake. Shields B. Craft got to keep 10%, the balance was mostly held by three investment banks including Bear Stearns. Early in the second half of 1966, the fleet comprised three DC-7s with two DC-9-10s scheduled for delivery later that year. With Standard now healthy, the CAB permanently certificated it as a supplemental air carrier in August 1967.[10] In early 1967, Pike took its stake up to 54%.[11] By November 1967, the DC-7s were gone and Standard had two DC-9s and two Boeing 707s, making it the only supplemental with an all fan-jet fleet.[12] Standard made $11 million in revenue in 1967 (over $100 million in 2024 terms), but lost $1.8 million and Pike was disappointed to find that aircraft financing was not as easy as it was for drilling rigs, a business that was thriving. So at the end of 1967 it decided to shed Standard as well as some other non-core businesses.[11] In March 1968 Pike announced a 45% loss on its $2.7 million investment in Standard.[13] The announcement came just over a month after Standard's 7 February 1968 crash of a 707 at Vancouver in which two people lost their lives due to pilot error (see Accidents).
Standard had net losses of $7 million between September 30, 1967, and September 30, 1969. The DC-9s left the fleet in the fourth quarter of 1968.[14] In 1969 Standard rolled out charter service with Convair 440s, a piston aircraft from the 1950s, which the airline marketed as "Club 44".[15] The airline, without warning, stopped flying on 1 August 1969, the last flight being an early morning flight from Las Vegas to New York, leaving groups scrambling for replacement service.[16] The airline cited among the factors leading to its demise the recent approval of group fares for scheduled airlines (shifting vacation traffic from charter carriers to scheduled) and the fact that its jet aircraft were not convertible (able to also fly cargo), making them less desirable to the military.[17] In 1975, in response to another application to recycle the Standard Airways certificate, the CAB noted there had been at least nine such attempts since the airline stopped operating and the company had been languishing as a "mere shell" in bankruptcy since 24 September 1969. The CAB revoked the certificate.[18]
The final Standard Airways fleet was: