Page 30 - Volume 15 Number 12

However, two months later, a deal was finalized that would allow Hayden, Stone and Company to acquire a 50% stake in the Kansas company. Beech once again traveled east by train to complete the transaction. He not only played a key role in the negotiations, but his remaining as president was deemed essential by Hayden, Stone officials. Basically, the agreement dissolved the original Travel Air Manufacturing Company, Inc., and reorganized it under Delaware law as the “Travel Air Company.” Beech and the board of directors believed they had made a good business decision that would prove beneficial for the reborn company and its growing number of stockholders. The eastern financiers were pleased to have succeeded where other suitors had failed to buy into one of the largest commercial airplane manufacturers in the United States. Richard F. Hoyt, a senior official with Wright Aeronautical, was quick to point out that they wanted to see Travel Air grow, and plans were underway to expand the East Central factory complex that would significantly increase production.
In the wake of the reorganization, as of January 1929, the company’s board of directors had a few new faces and names that hailed chiefly from the East Coast. Hoyt became Chairman of the Board and Captain F.T. Courtney, Harold Fowler, S.R. Reed and Chandler Hovey were elected members. Wichita men retained on the board included Thad Carver, Jack Turner, C.G. Yankey, and G.A. Stearns.
The new board quickly authorized construction of a third building to be designated “Factory “C” and voted to buy the entire East Central flying field as soon as the city’s lease expired. Although the city had paid $17,000 for the property in 1928, plans called for developing Wichita’s municipal airport a few miles to the south in what was known locally as the “California Section.”
In March 1929, the Travel Air Company set an all-time high for sales in a single month – $300,000. By June, the order books for new airplanes were bursting at the seams, and the busy factory complex 5 miles east of downtown Wichita, Kansas, was struggling to deliver 25 aircraft per week.
By May of that year, however, the Travel Air Company had become the target of another major aviation consortium that would be formed by a proposed merger of the Wright Aeronautical Corporation with the famous Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company (established in 1916 by pioneer aviator Glenn H. Curtiss) to create the Curtiss-Wright Corporation. To prepare for what appeared to be a future with unlimited potential, the company’s board of directors and its president, Walter H. Beech, chose to join forces with the new organization. East Coast-based Curtiss-Wright was poised to make millions of dollars in profits, as were other large aviation corporations at that time, thanks to a booming stock market that helped generate skyrocketing revenues as America’s new-found love affair with flying continued unabated.
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28 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
DECEMBER 2021