Transcontinental Airway System
navigational aid deployed in the United States
The Transcontinental Airway System was a navigational aid deployed in the United States during the 1920s.
History
In 1923, the United States Congress funded a sequential lighted airway along the transcontinental airmail route. The lighted airway was proposed by National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and deployed by the United States Department of Commerce. It was managed by the Aeronautical Branch of the Bureau of Standards. The first segment built was between Chicago, Illinois, and Cheyenne, Wyoming. It was situated in the middle of the airmail route to enable aircraft to depart from either coast in the daytime and reach the lighted airway by nightfall. Lighted emergency airfields were also funded along the route every 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 km).
The construction pace was fast, and pilots wishing to become airmail pilots were first exposed to the harsh wintertime work with the crews building the first segments of the lighting system.
By the end of 1923, the public anticipated anchored lighted airways across the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean and to China.
The first nighttime airmail flights started on July 1, 1924.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Transcontinental Airway System” is navigational aid deployed in the United States. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Transcontinental, Airway and System, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Transcontinental Airway System” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.