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Inland Air Lines
Inland Air Lines was a small trunk carrier, a scheduled United States airline which started as Wyoming Air Service (WAS), founded by Richard Leferink in May 1930, initially as a flying school.[2][3] In the mid-1930s WAS won airmail contracts for routes in Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota and Montana. WAS changed its name to Inland Air Lines on 1 July 1938.[4][5] Pursuant to the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) of the United States certificated Inland as a United States scheduled airline on March 28, 1939.[6] Thereafter, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), which succeeded the CAA in 1940, regulated Inland as a trunk carrier. In 1944, the CAB approved the purchase of Inland by Western Air Lines.[7] However, although Western controlled the overwhelming majority of Inland’s stock, as a Wyoming corporation, Inland could not be merged into Western without the unanimous consent of its shareholders, and a few shareholders continued to hold out. Therefore, Inland continued to exist as a separate subsidiary of Western until 1952, when Wyoming law changed, the CAB gave final approval and Western was finally able to merge Inland into itself.[4][8] Inland styled itself as "The Wings Over The West."[9] In 1948, Inland accounted for less than a half percent of total trunk airline Revenue-Passenger Miles, the smallest trunk airline by that measure.[10] And as of December 1949, it operated only a single DC-3.[11] References
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