Public–Private Partnerships in the Air: Airline Cooperation and US Diplomacy in the Development of the First Transatlantic Air Route

In 1937, the first commercial transatlantic air route was inaugurated, connecting Baltimore with the British colony of Bermuda. This route, jointly operated by the U.S.’s Pan American Airways and its British counterpart, Imperial Airways, was meant to be the first leg of a complete Anglo-American connection across the North Atlantic. However, when scheduled passenger flights between the United States and Europe were eventually inaugurated in June 1939, it was the American airline alone that operated this route.

This paper traces the development of commercial transatlantic flying since c. 1930, when British, American, French, and German airlines embarked on their national projects to open-up the Atlantic Ocean for passenger services. The paper’s focus is twofold. First, it seeks to demonstrate that these different projects were not solely competitors, but that relations between them were multifarious and included competition as much as collaboration, often in flexible alliances.

The paper’s second focus is on the role of the U.S. government and the way in which it used negotiations for landing rights as a political tool. By withholding a license from Lufthansa in 1936, the United States effectively stalled the German project, giving the American airline a head start. At the same time, the U.S. Foreign Service heavily supported Pan American Airways’ negotiations to gain landing rights abroad and exerted pressure on the Portuguese government to grant access to both the Azores and Lisbon.

Studying the history of the transatlantic air route and exploring the role of both commercial airlines and state agents in its development, the paper thus illuminates the complex ways in which airborne infrastructure was extended in the interwar period and explains how the U.S. airline became the dominant competitor by the eve of the Second World War.