The original route planners likely picked the city pair to follow the Union Pacific Railroad line, which would serve as a visual landmark in fair weather. Katnik was initially assigned to fly the Cheyenne-to-Rawlins, Wyo., leg on September 10. He learned about the planned reenactment through a local Experimental Aircraft Association chapter and contacted the event organizer to see if he could participate. Katnik, a B-737 flight instructor at the United Airlines Flight Training Center in Denver, Colo., owns a Cessna 150G, which he parks at Boulder Municipal Airport in Boulder, Colo. One such aviator, Jack Knight, later became a United captain and one of ALPA’s first members.Īn Air Mail 100 Centennial Flights poster promotes the historic four-day event. Many of the pilots who survived the difficult conditions and not-always-dependable aircraft of that era went on to become the first generation of airline pilots. 8, 1920, the Post Office launched the nation’s first transcontinental airmail route. Regional airmail service in the United States began in 1918, but on Sept. On September 8–11-exactly 100 years from the original airmail operation-he and 39 other pilots, flying 15 legs of a 2,560-mile journey from Farmingdale, N.Y., to San Francisco, Calif., transported a commemorative mailbag for the Air Mail 100 Centennial Flights reenactment. ALPA Pilot Relives First Transcontinental Airmail Service Helps Celebrate Route’s Centennial Anniversary By John Perkinson, Senior Staff Writerį/O Kent Katnik (United) recently had the opportunity of a lifetime participating in a relay team memorializing the very first coast-to-coast airmail run in the United States.