Ludington Airlines Consolidated Fleetster 17-A
NC705Y
(c/n 3)
\
Ludington Airlines was formed in August 1929 by Philadelphia financier
C.T. Ludington.
Ludington's initial airline experience came from his Cape Cod Airway
which linked Phil-
adelphia with Newport, RI and Woods Hole, Mass with a
Travel Air 6000 and a Fairchild
71. The Ludington Line began of 1 September 1930
with a route from Newark, through
Camden, NJ to Washington D.C. using Lockheed Vegas,
Stinson Tri-Motors and three
Consolidated Fleetsters, the last of which is seen above
in this Consolidated Vultee
photo taken in June 1932 (I was almost 1 year old).
.Photos of Ludington's aircraft are
extremely rare, and, over the years, I have been unable to glean a shot
of one of their
Stinson SM-6000s, even though they possessed a modest
fleet. Anyway, Ludington
maintained the coveted frequency of "On the hour, every
hour' from 08.00 to 17.00 hrs,
daily. However, when Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown
awarded the air mail
subsidy of Ludington's routes to Eastern Air Transport,
the little airline was ostensibly
forced out of business and was sold to EAT in February of
1933.