Alaskan Airways Fairchild 71  NC155H    (c/n   663)

                                    

                                         This historic shot is from the archives of the Museum of Alaska Transportation and Industry
                                         and is shown here courtesy of the Lars Opland collection.  It shows one of the fleet of Fair-
                                         child 71s operated by Alaskan Airways Inc., between 1928 and 1932.  This company was
                                         set up by Alaskan aviation pioneer Ben Eielson as an operating subsidiary of the Aviation
                                         Corporation of America.  This conglomerate, of course, was the financial holding unit which
                                         owned (among other things) American Airways, hence the badge and titling on the fuselage
                                         of this machine.  Alaskan Airways basically combined the routes set up by Wien, Bennett &
                                         Rodebaugh and Anchorage Air Transport.   This covered territory from Fairbanks to Point
                                         Barrow and to McGrath and also points northwest of Anchorage.   Unfortunately Eielson
                                         himself was killed in an accident on 9 November 1929.  Alaskan Airways Inc was purchased
                                         by Pacific Alaska Airways (a Pan American subsidiary) in June of 1932, and most of its
                                         Fairchilds and other small aircraft passed to that company..