Mid-Continent Airlines
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Mid-Continent Airlines operated in the central United States through the 1930s until merging with Braniff Airlines in 1952.
The company was in 1928 in Sioux City, Iowa as Hanford's Tri-State Airlines by Arthur Hanford, Jr., who offered charter service and schedule flights from Sioux City to Omaha, Nebraska, Minneapolis, Minnesota and Bismarck, North Dakota.
In 1934 it was awarded mail contract for runs from Minneapolis to Kansas City, Kansas; from Sioux Falls to Bismarck; and from Chicago, Illinois to Winnipeg via Minneapolis. The fleet consisted only of four 4-passenger Lockheed Vega and three Ford Tri-Motors
Hanford died in 1935 and his father took over the airline and it was acquired in 1936 by Thomas Fortune Ryan III, the grandchild of financier Thomas Fortune Ryan. Ryan moved the headquarters to Kansas City and renamed the airline Mid-Continent in 1938 after expanding service into the oil boom cities in the Mid-continent Oil Field out of a hub in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ten-passenger Lockheed Electras were added to the fleet.
Both Northwest Airlines and American Airlines proposed mergers with the airline in the 1940s but they were never approved.
After World War II Mid-Continent expanded to Shreveport, Louisiana, New Orleans, Louisiana and Houston, Texas.
Mid-Continent got a lucrative contract to deliver airmail in 1950 on the North Central route #106.
Mid-Continent was the only major airline offering passenger and mail service to Fairfax Airport across the Missouri River from Kansas City Municipal Airport. The airport was inundated in the Great Flood of 1951.
Kansas City, Missouri moved to build a new airport away from the river for both Mid-Continent and TWA which had its main overhaul base in a former B-25 Bomber factory at Fairfax. The new airport was to be called Mid-Continent Airport which would eventually become Kansas City International Airport. However before the airport could open, Mid-Continent Airlines was taken over by Braniff in 1952.
