Page 29 - January 23

Travel Air a whopping $20,000 – a staggering sum in 1928. It was the most expensive airplane the company built in its brief, five-year existence.
After flying with company pilot “Pete” Hill to become familiar with the monoplane, Beery and his employee George Maves took off from Travel Air Field December 18 en route to Los Angeles, California. Maves, who reportedly learned to fly under the able tutelage of famous aviator Art Goebel, had been hired by Beery chiefly to serve as a mechanic to maintain the A6000A and keep it ready for flight.5
Beery was pleased with his new ship and flew it regularly during the next 15 months, including a number of long cross-country flights for which the airplane was well suited. For example, according to the Davis-Monthan Aviation Field
The “flight deck” of a Travel Air monoplane was relatively advanced for 1928 with gyroscopic flight instruments, a panel-mounted quadrant for throttle, mixture and spark controls. Round, Deperdussin-type control wheels were common on many cabin airplanes of the era, and were standard equipment for Travel Air monoplanes. Visibility from the cockpit was somewhat restricted by the windshield structure, which was redesigned on later Type 6000 airplanes.
(Special Collections and University Archives, Wichita State University Libraries)
JANUARY 2023
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 27