Role Biplane aircraft
Manufacturer Travel Air, Curtiss-Wright Designer Lloyd Stearman
First flight 13 March 1925
Introduction 1925
Status Retired
Primary user Private owners, aerial sightseeing businesses
Produced 1925–1930
Number built approx 1,300
The Travel Air Model A was engineered chiefly by Lloyd Stearman, with input from Travel Air co-founders Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna, and Bill Snook and could trace its ancestry back to the Swallow New Swallow biplane. The Travel Air, however, replaced the New Swallow's wooden fuselage structure with a welded steel tube. An interim design, the Winstead Special, was developed by the Winstead brothers from a metal fuselage frame developed at Swallow by Stearman and Walter Beech, but subsequently rejected by Swallow president Jake Moellendick, a decision which triggered the departure of both Stearman and Beech, and the creation of Travel Air. Until the appearance of the all new 12/14/16 series, all subsequent Travel Air biplanes would be derived from the Model A.
TThe Travel Air biplanes were conventional single-bay biplanes with staggered wings braced by N-struts. The fuselage was fabric-covered welded chromium-molybdenum alloy steel tubes, faired with wooden battens and they had two open cockpits in tandem, with the forward cockpit carrying two passengers side by side.
IDate from Aerofiles
Initially Travel Air assigned letters to each type, with a suffix denoting the engine.
Ceiling
Combat RANGE
Aircraft Speed
Max Crew
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In 1930, the Curtiss Wright Corporation purchased the Travel Air Company. After the final model 6000 was developed, Stearman, Cessna, and Beech would go on to contribute much to American aviation history with their own individual companies.
In 1924, Lloyd Stearman, Clyde Cessna, and Walter Beech formed the Travel Air Manufacturing Company in Wichita, Kansas.
A later model, the Travel Air 2000, was built with horn-balanced control surfaces, which were copied from the famous Fokker D-VII fighter from World War I.