Mid-Continent Airlines
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Mid-Continent Airlines operated in the central United States through the 1930s and 1940s. The company was in 1928 in Sioux City, Iowa as Hanford's Tri-State Airlines by Arthur Hanford, Jr. The name was changed to Mid-Continent Airlines in 1938. The airline merged with Braniff in 1952.
Braniff continued to use the Mid-Continent corporate name throughout its various bankruptcies until finally going out of business in 1989.
Mid-Continent got a lucrative contract to deliver airmail in 1950 on the North Central route #106. Air Mail in Kansas City, Missouri used to be handled at Fairfax Airport in Kansas City, Kansas. The Great Flood of 1951 destroyed Fairfax and Kansas City, Missouri, built a new airport in Platte County, Missouri away from the Missouri River to keep the airline along with TWA which had lost its overhaul base in the flood. The new airport was eventually be Kansas City International Airport. Its original name was Mid-Continent Airport (later elevated to "international" status). The IATA designation of MCI for Mid-Continent has stuck for the Kansas City airport.
Aircraft operated by Mid-Continent Airlines included the Ford Trimotor, Lockheed Electra, Douglas DC-3, Lockheed Lodestar, and Convair 240. By the time of the merger, the airline's routes stretched from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Houston and New Orleans.
