For nearly 60 years, United Airlines has called Hawai'i its little corner of the world. Cute slogan or no, the airline giant has spent millions of dollars marketing the Islands as a tourist destination.
From the very beginning, United viewed service to Hawai'i as a key route and used its extensive network of Mainland flights to funnel passengers to the Islands.
United initiated Mainland service to Hawai'i on May 1, 1947, with a flight from San Francisco. Passengers flew on a piston-engine DC-6 — the "Mainliner Hawaii" — and paid $135 for a one-way ticket. The trip took about 10 hours.
There were empty seats in the 45-passenger plane, but all 33 people on the first flight were considered first class. They ate meal service with real silverware and cloth table covers.
Dignitaries met them at the airport, including the mayor of Honolulu and the territorial governor.
In those days, the DC-6 airplanes were the biggest thing to land at Honolulu International Airport, which had only recently changed its name from John Rodgers Airport.
They flew a dozen flights a week to the Islands.
At the time, a former Hawai'i resident who was born on a sugar plantation in Waipahu was president of United. William A. "Pat" Patterson recognized Hawai'i's potential as an exotic tourist destination — and through the years, millions of passengers agreed.
Service to the Islands in the late 1940s was a direct challenge to Pan American World Airways, which had used its flying boats to pioneer service to the Pacific in the 1930s.
In 1950, United started flying the larger, 55-passenger Boeing Stratocruisers directly from Los Angeles. And later, with a nod to Patterson's roots, United would name one of its new jets "Waipahu."
But by the end of the 1950s, United fell behind Pan Am when it became the first American-flag carrier to initiate jet travel from the Mainland, cutting the travel time in half.
Pan Am flew Boeing 707s while United chose instead to wait for Douglas Aircraft to finish its DC-8 aircraft, which it had helped design.
In March 1960, however, United launched the new DC-8 aircraft, which could carry
116 passengers in a little under five hours. From there, United practically consumed the Hawai'i market — and by the mid-1980s, its planes carried more than half of all passengers to the Islands.
