The idea behind Juan Trippe’s “survey” flight to Florida and Havana was to extend Colonial Air Transport’s route from Boston to Florida, then on southward. His board of directors could not see his point, so Trippe left Colonial. In a matter of weeks he had rounded up a few ex-war flier friends with money, and had organized his own airline under the title, Pan American Airways. Before it was completely set up Trippe had a contract to fly the mail from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba. That was in 1928. From that time on, Juan Trippe’s Pan American Airways continued to move just as fast as it had in its first few weeks of organization. Less than two years after the first Key West-Havana flight, Pan American was flying the mail to the Argentine. [Illustration: STEARMAN AJ-5] AIR TRANSPORT GROWS While Tony Fokker was producing his famous tri-motor transports for budding airlines like Juan Trippe’s Pan American Airways, Admiral Byrd and three companions had flown a tri-motored Fokker to France. Clarence Chamberlain and Charles Levine flew a Bellanca radial-powered monoplane to Germany; Army Lieutenants Maitland and Hegenberger flew 2,400 miles nonstop from Oakland, California, to Honolulu, Hawaii, in a radial-powered Fokker; Amelia Earhart and Wilmer Stultz flew a Fokker from Newfoundland to England. Amelia thus became the first woman to cross the Atlantic in an airplane. Later she was to fly the Atlantic alone. Tony Fokker’s tri-motors and Wright radial engines predominated in the famous flights of the late twenties, but other American planes and engines were coming into prominence. The first Wright 200-horsepower radial engine was called the _Whirlwind_. It was soon followed by a more powerful Wright radial, the 400-horsepower _Cyclone_. At the same time the Pratt & Whitney organization of Hartford, Connecticut, made the 425-horsepower air-cooled _Wasp_ radial engine. Wright _Cyclones_ and Pratt & Whitney _Wasps_ were destined to power American airplanes for many years to come. [Illustration: BOEING 40-B4] During 1927 and 1928 the map of the United States showed a continually increasing number of lines marked “Air Mail Route.” In 1926, the sixteen companies holding air mail contracts flew about 1,700,000 air miles. Much of this mileage was flown in single-engined, open-cockpit airplanes. Mail was the principal source of revenue. The few passengers who first braved the rigors of early air transport either rode on mail sacks or in small, cramped cockpits. Pilots and Operation men alike frankly admitted they were not keen about carrying passengers.