Benoist XIV

__NOTOC__ Infobox Aircraft
name=XIV


caption=
type=Airliner
manufacturer=Benoist
designer=Tom Benoist
first flight=1913
introduced=1914
retired=1914
status=
primary user=St Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line
more users=
produced=
number built=2
variants with their own articles=

The Benoist XIV was a small biplane flying boat built in the United States in 1913 in the hope of using it to carry paying passengers. The two examples built were used to provide the first heavier-than-air airline service anywhere in the world, and the first airline service of any kind at all in the United States.

Design and development

The aircraft was a conventional biplane with equal-span unstaggered wings with small pontoons at their tips. The engine was mounted on a pedestal aft of the cockpit and drove a two-blade pusher propeller. Accommodation for the pilot and single passenger was side-by-side in an open cockpit.

Operational history

The first example, given Benoist construction number 43 and named "Lark of Duluth", carried joyriders over the harbour at Duluth, Minnesota through the Summer of 1913, but this was not a commercial success. Later that year, Percival Fansler, a business associate of designer Tom Benoist, convinced Benoist to join him in establishing a scheduled air service between the Florida cities of St Petersburg and Tampa. Their newly-formed company, the St Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line purchased the "Lark of Duluth" and another Benoist XIV to inaugurate operations. The first scheduled flight between the two cities departed shortly before 10 AM on January 1, 1914 piloted by Tony Jannus and carried former St Petersburg mayor Abram C. Pheil as its passenger for the 22-mile (35-km) 23-minute flight. Regular tickets were priced at $5.00, but Phiel had paid $400.00 at auction for the ticket for the first crossing.

Over the next three months of the airline's short lifetime, the "Lark of Duluth" and her near-sister "Florida" (construction number 45) carried 1,205 passengers over Tampa Bay. At the end of March, however, the city subsidy ran out, and it proved no longer profitable to continue the service. The "Lark of Duluth" spent the remainder of 1914 carrying joyriders in several locations around the United States, including Duluth, Conneaut Lake, and San Diego. At this latter location it was damaged in a hard landing and pronounced unsalvageable.

In 1984, a full-scale flying replica was constructed by Florida Aviation Historical Society for the 70th anniversary of the flight. This aircraft is now displayed at the St Petersburg Museum of History.

pecifications

aerospecs
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crew=one pilot
capacity=1 passenger
length m=7.93
length ft=26
length in=0
span m=13.41
span ft=44
span in=0
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empty weight kg=567
empty weight lb=1,250
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eng1 number=1
eng1 type=Roberts straight-6
eng1 kw= 56
eng1 hp= 75
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max speed kmh=103
max speed mph=64
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range km=200
range miles=125
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References

*
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* [http://home.earthlink.net/~ralphcooper/pimagm6.htm Sport Aviation December 1983]
* [http://www.airminded.net/benoist14/benoist14.html airminded.net]
* [http://www.duluthairport.com/airport/history.html Duluth International Airport website]
* Servis, Richard. " [http://richardservis.tripod.com/thenonfictionreadermagazine/id5.html Tony Jannus and the World's First Commercial Airline] ". "Non Fiction Reader Magazine"
* [http://www.sptimes.com/2004/02/02/Northpinellas/Story_unfair_in_treat.shtml Letter] from St Petersburg Museum of History executive director Will Michaels printed in the "St Petersburg Times" 2 February 2004.
* [http://home.earthlink.net/~ralphcooper/bioroger.htm Pioneer Pilot Walter E. Lees]

External links

* [http://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/airboat.htm Contemporary postcards]
* [http://www.airchive.com/SITE%20PAGES/PLANE-BENOIST.html Photographs of St Petersburg Museum of History display]

ee also

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Pusher aircraft