NYRBA was founded by Colonel
Ralph A. O'Neill, who had been a decorated ace fighter pilot in
World War I and then been a main figure in the establishment of both civil and military aviation in
Mexico. He was named the exclusive agent for
Boeing and
Pratt & Whitney in all of
Latin America in 1927, and in his travels he conceived the idea for the airline. A self-made man, O'Neill personally establishing all South American stops for NYRBA, created designs for the company's seaplanes with leading manufacturers, and arranged the financial backing for his new company. On August 21, 1929, NYRBA started to fly daily between
Buenos Aires and
Montevideo using the S-38. On September 1, 1929, a flight to
Santiago de Chile was initiated and on November 29 on the same year, a flight between Buenos Aires and
Yacuíba,
Bolivia with multiple stops, started. Brazilian operations started on January 24, 1930, with the creation of its Brazilian subsidiary
NYRBA do Brasil with flights along the Brazilian coast. The inaugural flight between
Buenos Aires and
Miami took place between February 19 and 25, 1930, using eight different Commodores seaplanes and from then on they became regular. Refueling bases consisted of barges and boats that were stationed every 125 to 460 miles along the routes. Most would fuel with five gallon tin cans shipped from Standard Oil in New Jersey. Passenger loads in March 1930 were 15% from Miami to Montevideo, 70% to Buenos Aires, and 45% to Santiago with 16 to 20 cents charged per mile. Another coup by O'Neill was to secure the Ponta do Calabouço landfill, considered the most valuable real estate in
Rio de Janeiro, for use as NYRBA's base in the city. With the construction of these first "airports", NYRBA was at the time, the world's longest airline, 7,800 miles. O'Neill met callous opposition from
Juan Trippe, who with his associates had taken control of
Pan Am. Trippe, his wealthy Yale roommate
Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, and their
Aviation Corporation of the Americas chairman
Richard Hoyt were related by marriage and close to the Second Assistant Postmaster General,
W. Irving Glover, the professional head of the U.S. Post Office as the position of
Postmaster General was a political
sinecure. Glover refused to grant air mail contracts to any company not controlled by Trippe's triumvirate. This action was both highly illegal to monopoly laws and a morally corrupt abuse of power. O'Neill soldiered on in the belief that an airline could actually support itself by carrying passengers, and managed to obtain backing from
James Rand, Jr., head of
Remington Rand, and others, and NYRBA took to the skies. Their proudest aircraft were the
Consolidated Commodore flying boats, although they also used the
Consolidated Fleetster, and the
Sikorsky S-38. After the onset of the
Great Depression NYRBA's backers were coerced by Trippe and Glover to began to pull out their investments. Though the company's business was growing and it had far more assets, it was compelled to merge as the junior partner into Trippe's
Pan Am under circumstances O'Neill described as "a shotgun wedding after a damnable rape". On August 19, 1930
Pan American took over NYRBA for the bargain price of US$2 million. O'Neill, when offered to head Pan Am's East Coast operations, stated: "You can steal my house, but you can't ask me to run it for you". While the aviation business thrived, with financial credit given to Pan Am which contrived to take even when it was still controlled by NYRBA, the Brazilian government re-appropriated Ponta do Calabouço. The subsidiary
NYRBA do Brasil, which Pan American retained 100% of the shares until 1942, was renamed
Panair do Brasil on November 21, 1930. It later became that country's flag carrier. The NYRBA legacy has been greatly overshadowed by Pan Am, but its plethora of accomplishments cannot be denied. ==Destinations==