Classic American Airlines

Rating:
Summary: A great book
Review: Beautifully illustrated, with some marvellous photos, this book is a must for anyone interested in airliners, particularly older types.

Although the individual histories of the airlines do, necessarily tend to follow the same narrative format-the early days, the build up during the 1930s, war service, the propliner era, the transition to jets and history thereafter, the book is very well written and I found it particularly interesting, as a propliner enthusiast, for its coverage of the great transition from pistons to jets, beginning in the late 1950s.

The photographs are a good mix of old and specially taken new shots of airline memorabilia etc. In all, an excellent book for anyone interested in the history of America's leading airlines and their aircraft-and I can say that speaking from England

Rating:
Summary: A lovely nostalgia flight into the past
Review: Classic American Airlines brilliantly captures the glory days of America's major airlines from the founding of the industry to deregulation. A fantastic collection of color and black and white period photos, color air to air portraits of currently flying restored vintage airliners in original livery, and pictures of posters and aircraft memorabilia capture the best of times for passengers and airline employees. The shot of a Pan Am Stratocruiser making a low pass over the Queen Elzabeth is just one example of the rare photos to be seen. What came after this time, deregulation and the sad demise of some of the best known majors is left to be told another time in another book. A beautifully produced, highly reccommended book.

Rating:
Summary: Classic American Airlines
Review: This book reviews the history of the 11 largest trunk carriers flying at the end of the CAB regulated era. Only 6 of the profiled carriers (soon to be only five with the AA purchase of TW)survive today.

I found the book wonderfully quirky...

It features some facinating photography of each carriers aircraft and promotional material, much of it in color.

However the book is uneven in it's editorial content. The amount of material devoted to each carrier is somewhat related to it's size relative to about 1970. Hense, there is relatively more information devoted to EA and TW versus NW and DL.

Lastly, the book fails to cover some of the major events of each profiled carrier. Events such as why EA, TW, and PA failed are given a short shift. In 12 pages of EA history, only 3 short paragraphs explain it's last 8 troublesome years. Employees of each profiled airline will probably be asking "how could the author leave that event out?"

Overall the book gives an detailed perspective of how the industry developed from it's infancy to about 1985, after that the editorial content thins out.