United Airlines

United Airlines is reportedly the oldest commercial airline in the United States, traced back to the Varney Airlines airmail service of Walter Varney, whose first flight was on April 6, 1926. In 1927, airplane pioneer William Boeing founded his own airline, Boeing Air Transport, and began buying other airmail carriers, including Varney Airlines. Within four years, Boeing's holdings grew to include airlines, airplanes and parts manufacturing companies, and several airports. In 1929, the company changed its name to United Aircraft - Transport Corp. In, 1930, when the capacity of airplanes proved sufficient, passengers were also transported, apart from airmail.

After the Air Mail Scandal of 1930, the Air Mail Act of 1934 in the United States banned the common ownership of airplane manufacturers and airlines. William Boeing's company was broken into three: a parts supplier (the future United Technologies), an aircraft manufacturer (the Boeing Airplane Company), and an airline group-United Airlines.

Expansion into a national carrier: United Airlines' early routes were formed by air mail routes, and operated north-and-south along the West Coast, and east-to-west from San Francisco via Denver, Colorado to Chicago in the Midwest and on to Washington, DC. These cities were the major United Airlines hubs, and still exist today as such.

During World War II United Airlines' trained ground crews modified airplanes for use as bombers, and transported mail, material, and troops in the war effort. Post-war United benefited from both the wartime development of new airplane technologies (like the pressurized cabin which permitted planes to fly above the weather) and a boom in customer demand for air travel. This was also the period in which Pan American Airways established a Tokyo hub and revived its Pacific route system that would later be acquired by United.

United Airlines merged with Capital Airlines on June 1, 1961, and became the world's largest commercial airline, and gave it a route network covering the entire United States. In 1968 the company reorganized, creating UAL Corporation, with United Airlines as a completely owned subsidiary. United Airlines had begun to seek overseas routes in the 1960s; however the Transpacific Route Case (1969) denied it this expansion. United Airlines did not gain an overseas route until 1983, when it began flights to Tokyo from Portland and Seattle. In 1985, United Airlines agreed to purchase Pan American World Airways' entire Pacific Division, and by the end of 1986, United operated flights to 13 Pacific destinations.

In May 1981, 1 week after rival American Airlines launched Advantage - the first frequent flyer program - United launched its own, Mileage Plus.

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