Alexander Aircraft Company

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A 1930 Alexander Eaglerock Model A-14, now on display at Denver International Airport.

The Alexander Aircraft Company was an aircraft manufacturer in Colorado in the 1920s. The company began life as the Alexander Film Company, under the brothers J. Don and S. Don Alexander. The company specialized in film advertising, but when the younger J. Don Alexander wanted forty or fifty airplanes for his salesmen, he was forced to produce his own aircraft, as no company at the time was able to fill such an order. Originally headquartered in Englewood, the film-turned-aircraft company was forced to move to Colorado Springs in order to expand.^[1]

The company built a number of successful versions of the Alexander Eaglerock biplane. These planes were especially popular with barnstormers. (Test pilot Tony LeVier took his first flying lesson from a barnstormer in an Eaglerock in 1928.) They were also used for carrying airmail, aerial photography, crop dusting, and air racing.

For a brief period from 1928 to 1929, Alexander was the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, and more aircraft were built in Colorado than anywhere else in the world. However, financial woes forced the company to liquidate in the early 1930s. Alexander would also be known for starting the career of Al Mooney, the founder of Mooney Aircraft, a general aircraft manufacturer that continues in operation in Kerrville, TX.^[2]

[edit] Survivors

A Model 24 Alexander aircraft survive of the 893 built from 1926 to 1932. The oldest of these is an OX-5-powered "Longwing" Eaglerock at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum, built in 1926; on loan from the Colorado Aviation Historical Society.

A later version, a 1930 Model A-14 (NC205Y), hangs at the west end of Concourse B of Denver International Airport. It was restored over a 25-year period by the Antique Airplane Association of Colorado.

At the Science Spectrum in Lubbock, Texas, a 1929 Alexander Eaglerock biplane is on display.

A 1928 Eaglerock can be seen at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. It is on loan from the Museum of Flight collection.

Though none of the 11 Alexander Eaglerock Bullet monoplanes remain, a Wyoming pilot named Mary Senft Hanson recreated the aircraft and flew it successfully in October, 2006.^{[citation needed]}