Ford Tri-Motor Tour coming to Wayne County Airport
For four days beginning Aug. 17, area residents will have a chance to see a Tri-Motor in the skies around the Wayne County Airport. They also will have the chance to take a ride on the plane.
Over the course of history, there have been a few game-changing inventions, discoveries and developments that sent life hurtling forward, speeding up progress in unprecedented ways.
A century or so ago, not long after his biggest game-changer, the automobile, went into play, Henry Ford played a role in another one. And while he wasn’t there for its biggest advances, the man who revolutionized ground transportation did it again in the air.
Ford’s Tri-Motor, better known as the “Tin Goose,” took to the skies in 1926. Manufactured by Stout Metal Airplane, a division of the Ford Motor Company, a total of 199 Tri-Motors were built by 1933, when production was halted.
Eventually, the Tri-Motors were outfitted with seats — 10 in all to transport a small number of passengers — and an in-flight toilet. Voila, modern air travel was born.
“The plane is just a piece of aviation history,” said Greg Cantrell, a member of the Wadsworth-based Chapter 846 of the Experimental Aircraft Association. “The Tri-Motor was the first airliner to carry passengers for any distance at all.”
For those wanting to be one of those passengers in a modern-day setting, though with no long-distance destination, the chance will be available in a couple weeks. For four days beginning Aug. 17, area residents will have a chance to see a Tri-Motor in the skies around the Wayne County Airport.
The adventurous among them can book a ride on the legendary plane. Others just wanting a close-up look at the historical vehicle can do so at the airport. Billed as the Tri-Motor Tour, the event is being hosted by the EAA, along with sponsors Mike Pallotta Ford, the Seaman Corp., Steve Greer State Farm and the Wayne County commissioners.
The particular plane in question has serial No. 8. It has been used for service over the Grand Canyon and as an airliner in Honduras. The craft also has been a showpiece in the Harrah’s Auto and Aircraft Collection in Nevada. In 2014 the plane was bought by the Liberty Aviation Museum in Port Clinton, Ohio and restored to its current flight status.
This is the third visit to Wayne County of a Tri-Motor. The first was in 2015 and the other in 2019.
“They usually try to do these in the summer months,” Cantrell said. “The last time, the only time available was when the Wayne County Fair was going on. You don’t do anything to compete with the Wayne County Fair.”
Funds raised from selling rides on the Tri-Motor at this stop and others go to aviation scholarships. As a 501(c)(3) charity, the organization behind the visits donates $11,000 to individuals looking to get their private pilot’s license. Cantrell said this year two candidates emerged, so the group funded both of them.
“We try to promote aviation any way we can,” Cantrell said. “Mostly, we want to get youth involved. The main thing keeping youth from getting involved is really the cost of the training.”
Getting the Tri-Motor — so named because Ford insisted a single-engine plane wasn’t safe, so he had a pair of propellers added to the high-wing design — airworthy is no small task, either. After all, these birds are going on a century old.
“Unlike cars, planes are required to have an annual at least once a year,” Cantrell said. “Since they are flying this commercially, this plane is inspected even closer than that. It has to have maintenance, good maintenance, timely maintenance. It has to be done with an FAA-authorized person doing the inspection. When it’s down, it’s down for at least seven to 10 days.”
In the late-1920s, long before maintenance was a thing, the Tri-Motor took to the skies with small groups of passengers, changing the airscape for good.
“Henry Ford was such a visionist, but he never really made money on this plane,” Cantrell said. “In 1933 things were just coming out of the depression. He was not making money on these planes, so he just shut it down.”
Others soon picked up the mantle and kept it going. It took a while before there was an airline industry, ferrying millions of people around the world, but one can argue the people behind the Tri-Motor were the pioneers of a game-changing arena in which people could travel in hours what not long before took days or weeks. Suddenly, the country — even the world — was very small.
While Ford never made money on the Tri-Motor, his faith in the concept of an airliner, along with his good name in the auto industry, gave a lot of credibility to the infantile area of modern aviation.
“More companies got involved making these planes and better ones,” Cantrell said.
Soon after the Tri-Motor went into service, the Transcontinental Air Transport began operating coast-to-coast flights, and by 1928 the airline industry was up and running. Transcontinental eventually became TWA, and Tri-Motors were used in Pan American’s first international flights, traveling from the U.S. to Cuba.
Among those who flew Tri-Motors in the early days were Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart while Franklin Roosevelt rode in one in 1932 as planes began phasing out “whistle-stop” campaign trips via train. A Tri-Motor also was the plane of choice in the first flight over the South Pole.
“These planes were extremely reliable,” Cantrell said. “Once Henry Ford quit making them for airline purposes, people used them for all sorts of other things.”
Tickets to ride in the Tri-Motor can be purchased for $95 for adults and $65 for children age 17 and under at www.flytheford.org or by calling 877-952-5395.