Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
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With one of the best records in American commercial aviation, Inter-Island Airways, Ltd., begins its ninth year of services to the territory today.
The company’s big Sikorsky amphibian planes have carried more than 98,000 persons, been aloft more than 22,000 hours, and flow 11,346,409 passengers miles without accident to a single passenger since the inaugural flight November 11, 1929.
To aid the airline during its first five years of pioneering effort in inter-island flying, the government granted certain tax exemptions, but since those exemptions were lifted the company has paid approximately $119,000 in taxes. Since the territorial gas tax was established, the air line has paid regular gas taxes in excess of $38,000.
The company has an annual payroll of $120,000, and since inauguration of service has paid out more than a half million dollars in wages. Investment of the air line has increased from $275,000 in 1929 to more than $900,000 at the present time.
Generally responsible for the line was Stanley C. Kennedy, president and general manager of the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Co., of which the air service is a subsidiary. From the first, Mr. Kennedy laid down a policy of using only amphibian planes for the service, and there has been no deviation. These planes can land and take off on water with the same ease and safety as on the ground.
Starting with two S-38 type eight-passenger amphibians in 1929, the company steadily increased flying equipment with the best planes designed for the service.
In 1935 when Sikorsky designed his now famous S-43 16 passenger amphibians, Inter-Island Airways signed a contract for the first of these planes and accepted delivery upon its completion. So successful was this model, rated as the fastest commercial amphibian in the world, that Inter-Island Airways now operates three of them in addition to two S-38s. …
The airline represents an investment of $900,000 for planes, ground stations, overhaul quarters, radio stations and other equipment essential to successful operations of commercial air service. Considerable work has also been done in landscaping and otherwise improving the main operations hangar at John Rodgers field.
