The first example, given Benoist construction number 43 and named
Lark of Duluth, carried joyriders over the harbour at
Duluth, Minnesota through the Summer of 1913, but the endeavor was not a commercial success. The repairs and paint job left the aircraft with the partial name, "of Du". Later that year,
Percival Fansler, a business associate of designer
Thomas W. Benoist, convinced Benoist to join him in establishing a scheduled air service between the Florida cities of
St Petersburg and
Tampa. Their newly formed company, the
St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line purchased the
Lark of Duluth and another Benoist XIV to inaugurate operations. The first scheduled flight between the two cities departed shortly before 10:00 a.m. on January 1,
1914, piloted by
Tony Jannus and carried former St Petersburg mayor
Abram C. Pheil as its passenger for the , 23-minute flight. Regular tickets were priced at $5.00 (equivalent to $ in ), but Pheil had paid $400.00 ($ in ) at auction for the ticket for the first crossing. Over the next three months of the airline's short lifetime, the
Lark of Duluth and her near-sister
Florida (construction number 45) carried 1,205 passengers over
Tampa Bay. At the end of March, however, the city subsidy ran out, and it proved no longer profitable to continue the service. The
Lark of Duluth spent the remainder of
1914 carrying joyriders in several locations around the United States, including Duluth,
Conneaut Lake, and
San Diego. The aircraft was damaged in a hard landing in San Diego and pronounced unsalvageable. ==Replicas==