Missoula, MT — Once it was called the “Limousine of the Air,” the private plane of choice for the likes of Wallace Beery, whose acting career bridged the silent and sound movie era. But the Travel Air 6000 became the bread and butter of flying in these mountains of Montana and Idaho for Johnson Flying Service.
Now Missoula has one all for itself.
Morris Owen, 83, watched a version of his aviation life roll before his eyes Monday morning as volunteers carefully backed the black and orange, fabric-covered airplane into the hangar at the Museum of Mountain Flying.
One of five operable Travel Airs in existence, it was built the same year Owen was born – 1929.
Six or seven years later, he took his first plane ride, in a barnstormer’s Travel Air in a stubble field outside of Geraldine.
“My dad bought me and a buddy a ride for a penny a pound,” Owen said. “I think it cost him 75 cents for me and a dollar-something for my buddy. Then, maybe 35 years later, I’m flying them.”
Limousines?
“I suppose that was the sales department that called them that,” Owen said with a chuckle.
But for delivering smokejumpers, hauling mail and supplies, and flying emergency missions into the mountains, this plane was unmatched through the middle decades of the 20th century, and Johnson Flying Service had a fleet of them.
“They’d haul a good load into a short field,” Owen said simply.
Dick Komberec, a retired airline pilot, earned his wings with Johnson Flying Service. Now vice president of the museum board, Komberec recently purchased the Travel Air from Dick Waite of Hagerman, Idaho.
On March 24, accompanied by two friends and flying aficionados, Komberec flew his new plane from its hangar in Gooding, Idaho, near Twin Falls, to Missoula in two hops. It was a two-hour, 10-minute flight to Dillon, Komberec said, and an hour from there to Missoula.
The plane is without a heating system, something that was missing indeed when they climbed to 9,500 feet above Monida Pass.
“It was very cold,” said Wes Gander, one of the passengers. “But we had our long johns on and gloves and blankets. We were ready for it.”
Former Johnson Air Service Travel Air 6000 lands at Missoula museum