Behalf of the Air Ministry and Post Office, the De Havilland Aircraft Company’s Aeroplane Hire Service (AHS) conducts a month-long series of real and practice airmail runs over a route from Plymouth-Belfast via Birmingham and Manchester. The first flight is in a DH 50 piloted by Alan Cobham on September 15, 1923.
When Imperial Airways, Ltd. is formed on March 31, 1924, the AHS is closed down in England; however, the experimental airmail service is revived as Northern Air Lines, Ltd. with AHS DH 50s from a Belfast base.
Regularly scheduled contract mail flights, together with newspapers, from Liverpool to Belfast are begun on April 30; weather allows Cobham to complete his Belfast-Liverpool run, but the DH 50 of V. N. Dickinson, en route to Belfast from Liverpool, must divert to Southport. Continued poor weather forces a suspension of service on June 2. Late in June, experimental DH 50 Glasgow-Belfast flights are started.
Weekday Glasgow-Belfast newspaper and mail flights are inaugurated by chief pilot R. H. McIntosh on March 17, 1925. Employing a DH 50 and two DH 9Cs, the service is continued until June 8. A DH 50 mail and newspaper service is launched from Carlisle-Belfast on September 2; the flights cease around November 3.
Meanwhile, flying an AHS DH 50, Alan Cobham makes a 3,000-mile, 28-hr. (flying time) roundtrip proving flight from London (Croydon)-Tangier on September 19-20. Unprofitable, operations are not resumed and the company’s assets are sold.
NORTHERN AIRLINES (1): United States (1968-1970). Northern is set up at St. Mary’s, Ohio, in the early summer of 1968 to provide scheduled passenger and cargo services to regional destinations. Employing a Beech 18 and a de Havilland Canada DHC-6-100 Twin Otter, the new commuter inaugurates daily multistop roundtrips on July 30 linking its base with Dayton, Lima, Findlay, and Cleveland.
An additional Twin Otter is purchased in 1969 and is used to start a new route south to Nashville via Louisville and Bowling Green. Overextended and unable to maintain its economic viability, the company is forced to shut down on June 16, 1970.
World History
