Ozark Air Lines Facts

This Page is dedicated to those facts which have been documented over the years and in some cases undocumented. As with the other Ozark pages this site is always under construction.

Ozark was founded by four men and during our 36 years of operations we were led by only four presidents.
According to an article on airline executive pay in the '50s, published in the 2 May 1955 issue of Aviation Week from the Pentagon Library, - Ozark's President Laddie Hamilton made $20,208 in salary and had a "big bonus" of $460. Compare this to Eastern's Eddie Rickenbacker, who earned $50,000 salary with a $14,009 bonus. TWA's President, R.S. Damon, actually made over $84,000 that year.
Provided by Rick Morgan RMorgan918@aol.com. Go Getter Bird notes, that Rick has quite a bit of material on Ozark in his files and offers to assist in writing the decade historys. Thanks Rick! We welcome and look forward to any information on Ozark Air Lines.
Rick Morgan provides another "factoid" from an old issue of Aviation Week: In 1963 Ozark's six Fairchild F-27s flew over 11,000 hours, and 2,271,000 revenue miles at an average cost of $178 per hour. The "average" aircraft was flown 6 hours and 27 minutes a day for almost 1300 miles.
The first DC9 purchased by Ozark cost $1.6 million. Today's cost of an MD80 is about $28 million. Today, a used DC-9 sells for more than the originals did new.
More from Rick - At the time of Ozark Airlines’ birth (1950):
- -Harry S Truman, of Independence, Missouri, was President.
- -In June, North Korean forces invaded the South to start the Korean conflict.
- -The New York Yankees beat the Philadelphia Phillies in four straight at the World Series.
- -The Cleveland Browns defeated the Los Angeles Rams to become NFL Champions.
- -Oklahoma beat LSU 35 to 0 in the Sugar Bowl.
- -Maryland beat Missouri 20 to 7 in the Gator Bowl.
- -Johnny Parsons won the Indy 500.
- -Golf’s Ben Hogan won the US Open.
In 1956 Ozark Airlines reservation offices sold tickets in its 45 cities via teletype for the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox and Chicago Cubs baseball teams and NFL Chicago Cardinals and Bears, presumably in order to give people a reason to fly Ozark. (Aviation Week, 24 Sep. 1956)

If you have other interesting fact about Ozark Airlines, please email them to (Go Getter Bird).

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