demonstrating
feathering Early days In November 1945, Shields B. Craft and Natalie Y. Gray created
Standard Air Cargo as a 60/40 partnership between them. Both Craft and Gray were involved in military pilot training during World War II, Craft as a pilot instructor, Gray as a dispatcher. They bought a war surplus
C-47 and started operations April 1946, engaging in everything from transporting lobsters, flying home returning veterans and transportation between the US mainland and Alaska. Stardard Air Cargo also ran a
fixed base operation at
San Diego Lindbergh Field, its headquarters. Standard did not consistently operate. For instance, in 1955, it had a single DC-3 that was on six-month lease to
California Central Airlines. In 1955 it had a net worth of $145,000 (about $1.7 million in 2024 dollars). By 1953 the carrier was using Standard Airways as a trade name.
Pink cloud The airline spent much of 1959 and 1960 not operating, before resuming in the second half of 1960 after its certificate was reissued to reflect a change of status from partnership to a Maryland corporation. Standard started "Pink Cloud" service from the west coast to Hawaii using the limited scheduled part of its supplemental authority, which allowed it to fly 10 flights per month in each direction on any given city pair. The lower half of the aircraft was painted pink, the flight attendants were clad in pink, the champagne was pink and so forth. During this era, the airline moved its operation to
Burbank. The June 1962 fleet comprised a
Douglas DC-6B, two
Lockheed L-749A Constellations and an
L-1049G Super Constellation, all owned other than one L-749. Standard received a temporary certificate as a supplemental air carrier in 1962 as required by new legislation, but only over the strong dissent of two of the five CAB Board members, who noted, among other things, the carrier's marginal financial state and the fact that new legislation would require the carrier be a pure charter carrier by 1965 yet it depended heavily on scheduled service. The majority noted the carrier's long history and the fact that its financial state, though precarious, was slowly improving and that it was, in fact, pursuing charters. In May 1963, Standard crashed its L-1049G at
Manhattan Municipal Airport in
Kansas (see
Accidents) while flying for the military, which quickly suspended it from flying military charters. While all on board survived, the cause of the accident was alarming: systemic maintenance issues had resulted in poorly functioning components that permitted a propeller to spontaneously reverse pitch, reversing thrust.
Jet era Standard started flying again on 13 February 1966, on the strength of a promised recapitalization by a company called Southern Pipeliners of
Hialeah, Florida which then failed to happen. The brief association gave Standard an identity as a
Miami airline. In early 1967, Pike took its stake up to 54%. By November 1967, the DC-7s were gone and Standard had two DC-9s and two
Boeing 707s, making it the only supplemental with an all fan-jet fleet. Standard made $11 million in revenue in 1967 (over $100 million in 2024 terms), but lost $1.8 million and Pike was disappointed to find that aircraft financing was not as easy as it was for drilling rigs, a business that was thriving. So at the end of 1967 it decided to shed Standard as well as some other non-core businesses. The announcement came just over a month after Standard's 7 February 1968 crash of a 707 at
Vancouver in which two people lost their lives due to pilot error (see
Accidents).
Collapse Standard had net losses of $7 million between September 30, 1967, and September 30, 1969. The DC-9s left the fleet in the fourth quarter of 1968. In 1969 Standard rolled out charter service with
Convair 440s, a piston aircraft from the 1950s, which the airline marketed as "Club 44". The airline, without warning, stopped flying on 1 August 1969, the last flight being an early morning flight from
Las Vegas to
New York, leaving groups scrambling for replacement service. The airline cited two main factors contributing to its collapse: • Poor aircraft choices (i) the military prioritized airlines with convertible (freight/passenger) aircraft in awarding charters, Standard's 707s were passenger-only. (ii) there was little charter demand for DC-9-10s and it had cost Standard $1 million to get out of the aircraft. • New scheduled airline group fares reduced demand for Hawaii charters. among the factors leading to its demise the recent approval of group fares for scheduled airlines (shifting vacation traffic from charter carriers to scheduled) and the fact that its jet aircraft were not convertible (able to also fly cargo), making them less desirable to the military. In 1975, in response to another application to recycle the Standard Airways certificate, the CAB noted there had been at least nine such attempts since the airline stopped operating and the company had been languishing as a "mere shell" in bankruptcy since 24 September 1969. The CAB revoked the certificate. ==Fleet==